Figures of Speech

If a nation is the sum of the stories it tells itself, then its political leaders might be something like its chief storytellers. But that role has long rested more comfortably on the shoulders of American presidents than with Canadian prime ministers; indeed, “storyteller-in-chief” was the title a New Yorker headline once bestowed upon Barack Obama.

The president gives an inaugural address and speaks annually to Congress in prime time. Every few years, the prime minister sits in a chair and listens as the governor general flatly reads the Speech from the Throne (the finance minister does give an annual budget speech, but typically everyone ignores it in the scramble to report the latest deficit number). The president regularly stands at a lectern, adorned with the seal of his office, to hold forth at length on the major issues of the day. The prime minister spends many weekday afternoons trading withering accusations in the barnyard atmosphere of question...