Tiger Woods’s return to the pinnacle of sport, capturing the 2019 Masters championship after 11 years in golf’s wilderness, is an inspiration for anyone who struggles against adversity – including, I venture, some of today’s political leaders.
“Can't anybody here play this game?” – Baseball savant Casey Stengel
Poor Casey suffered the misfortune of being the manager of the 1962 New York Mets, an expansion team with a 40-120 won-lost record and a label as the worst team in major league baseball history.
This is a stretch, I admit, but it seems to me that Stengel’s question – “Can’t anybody here play this game?” – could be asked of the 2019 version of the Liberal Party of Canada managed by Justin Trudeau.
There are countries in this world that are trying to cope with genuine, history-altering issues. Venezuela has a despised president who will not leave. The United States has the political train wreck of Donald Trump. Britain has the inept Theresa May and her self-inflicted Brexit disaster. New Zealand, that most peaceable of countries, suddenly confronts the slaughter of Muslim citizens while they are at prayer.
The SNC-Lavalin affair is a bit like Shakespeare’s “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.”
It has had its hour and much more. It has wreaked considerable havoc, damaging the credibility of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and knocking his Liberal Party into second place in the polls, while, ironically, making one of the Liberals’ own, Jody Wilson-Raybould, a heroine – an Indigenous woman bravely fending off a horde of male politicians who pursue power at the expense of principle.
Is the SNC-Lavalin/Jody Wilson-Raybould uproar really the silver bullet that will slay Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government?
