[LINK] "Cleverly subversive Liberal ad messes with Harper’s head"

[rfmcdonald]

Writing in the National Post, Kelly McParland is impressed by the understated competence of Justin Trudeau's recent YouTube clip, 39 seconds long, attesting to the party's success in raising a million dollars after Harper's recent attacks. Are the Liberals, he wonders, trying to drive the Conservatives mad with paranoia?

There is something decidedly weird about the whole set-up. First of all, there’s the outfit. OK, he’s young, he wants to come across as a typical Canadian guy, and typical Canadian guys of a younger age evidently wear dumpy-looking cargo pants on the weekend. That’s fine. But wait a minute, the job he wants is as Prime Minister, and Prime Ministers don’t usually stop to make chatty videos while on their way to put out the garbage in their grubbiest clothes. I bet Xi Jinping doesn’t do that. I know Putin doesn’t.

In the French version of the video, in fact, a truck drives noisily by just as the video is nearing the end, suggesting, 1. The Liberals only rented the camera for an hour and didn’t want to spend the extra dough to shoot a retake, and 2. Justin just missed the garbage truck and probably caught hell from Sophie when he got back inside.

There’s also the setting. It’s just at the bottom of the front steps of a typical-looking suburban Canadian home. So, is it Justin’s home, or did they drive to Brampton and shoo away some neighbours for 40 minutes while they did the shoot? The video is shot with two black bars on either side and Justin in the middle, looking suspiciously like it’s meant to mimic the Canadian flag. It’s also of suspiciously high quality for what is clearly meant to be a casual, almost amateurish film, meaning the party put great thought and effort into devising what looks like some undergrad’s campaign spot for a seat on the student council.