Canada

Canada had an election yesterday and elected Justin Trudeau, an experienced near clone of Obama.

He has a flare for the dramatic, in speech and action, and once referred to himself in the third person. When he gets excited, his narrow shoulders jump up and down and his arms flail about. He won’t hesitate to take off his shirt or sport ridiculous facial hair for charitable causes. At times, he looks like a caricature of himself.

That’s from Huffington Post !

God help Canada !

Justin Trudeau is often compared to Barack Obama, but, particularly in terms of both achievement and testosterone levels, Justin Trudeau makes Barack Obama look like Teddy Roosevelt.

She is not very fond of the new Canadian PM.

Justin Trudeau, whom I introduced to Taki readers last year as a flouncy-haired, forty-year-old Fauntleroy, “slender of body and of resume,” “living in the moral equivalent of his father’s basement.”

Justin’s most notable accomplishment to date has been forcing Canada’s conservatives—for whom the former PM’s surname is a spittle-flecked swear word; as a child, I’d assumed the man’s first name was “That”—to pay the late Pierre pere backhanded compliments, à la “As least the boy’s father had a few accomplishments to his name at that age….”

Well, at least Hillary will not have to defend her opposition to the XL Pipeline as Trudeau will probably shut down the oil shale mining in Alberta.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in, so to speak.

Every ruling party in a democracy eventually wears out its welcome, and on Monday Canadians tossed out the Conservative Party after nine years in power under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. They’re now taking a gamble that the winning Liberals, led by 43-year-old Justin Trudeau, won’t return to the anticompetitive economic policies of the past.

Mr. Harper resigned as Conservative leader and said in a gracious concession speech that “the people are never wrong.” They’d clearly had enough of Mr. Harper, who governed sensibly but in his later years had grown increasingly insular and autocratic in stifling party debate. The Conservatives also suffered from the global commodity bust, which has sent Canada into a mild recession after years of outperforming most of the developed world.

There are a few explanations but Trudeau ?

The question now is what the Liberals will do after having campaigned on the gauzy agenda of “change” and what Mr. Trudeau calls “positive politics.” The son of the late former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau is a former schoolteacher whose main selling point was that he is more likable than Mr. Harper.

He’ll be helped by not having to form a coalition with the New Democrats, who would have pulled him to the economic left. Mr. Trudeau moderated his populism in the campaign, promising to keep Canada’s top federal corporate-tax rate of 15%, which is a major competitive advantage compared to America’s 35%. He also supports the Keystone XL pipeline that President Obama has blocked.

That’s slightly reassuring but today is the day after.

Mr. Trudeau’s most corrosive threat in the long term might be his pledge to reduce carbon emissions, which could reduce investment in Canada’s vast energy reserves.

Well, it is an opportunity for a bit of Schadenfreude, at least for a year.