The depressing squalor of the Trump era has created in liberal Americans a gnawing hunger for leaders to admire. Foreign leaders are especially likely to set liberal hearts aflutter, because they are farther away and their flaws less visible. Of all these alternative “leaders of the free world,” it is perhaps Canada’s Justin Trudeau who has enjoyed the most attention. He proclaims himself a feminist, he hugs Syrian refugees as they arrive at Canadian airports, he performs yoga, he is impossibly handsome—what could go wrong?
But there were always two cracks visible in the face Trudeau presented to the world, and over the past three weeks, those lines have widened.
The first flaw: When frustrated or disappointed, he loses his cool. As one person on the receiving end of his ill temper put it to me, “He yells when he does not get his way, then gloats when he does.” The second? Trudeau does not always accurately think through the ultimate consequences of his actions.
Together, those two fault lines create a dangerous formula for bad decision making in times of crisis.
Read: Justin Trudeau’s feminist brand is imploding
Over the four years since he came to power in November 2015, Trudeau has offset his personal weaknesses by relying heavily on shrewder advisers. But since February, a serious and growing scandal has cost him the service of trusted aides. The head of the civil service has been forced to resign. Trudeau has been left more and more to his own judgment. This past weekend, that judgment tinged the scandal with a new note of farce.