First it was Vogue and the New York Times magazine, and on Sunday night, Justin Trudeau was featured for the millions of viewers of 60 Minutes. The Trudeau show will be playing this week on the world's biggest stage.
There's a moment for the new Prime Minister to gain attention in the United States, as he's to be feted at a rare White House state dinner. Justin Trudeau has found his celebrity appeal crosses borders, and he's using it to make the moment bigger.
In Washington, as in few world capitals, profile and power are closely related. If you're on TV and in the public eye, you've got pull, like an A-lister in Hollywood. Fostering and using that star appeal can be a shrewd foreign-policy move, like putting political capital in the bank.
Maybe the hard part is figuring out how to use it. Maybe. No Canadian PM, not even his famous father, Pierre, ever really had attention gushing in the U.S. from the get-go like Justin Trudeau, elected as a celeb.
That's the story 60 Minutes was out to tell Sunday night: the dashing young political scion, like a Kennedy, who led his party back from the political wilderness on a wave of hope. There's also contrast in Mr. Trudeau's outward-looking optimism and his welcome for Syrian refugees with the grumpy Trump politics of the moment in America.
The 60 Minutes profile states that with his election win, "his youth, his looks and his family name captured the world." It displayed clips of Mr. Trudeau being mobbed at a summit in Manila, and played back his childhood in the rare air of "popes and prime ministers and royalty."
Mr. Trudeau explained that people have always loved him or hated him for what's not real, his family name and fame.
But by now we know that Mr. Trudeau and the people around him are adept at using that celebrity status in modern political image-making.
This week, there's 60 Minutes, and a state dinner, and Washington receptions. Katie Couric posted a pic of herself with Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau on Instagram to herald a coming Yahoo! interview. Politico plans a day of pre-visit coverage Tuesday. There'll be more.
That's probably good politics for Mr. Trudeau at home. He's trying to underline warmer relations with U.S. President Barack Obama, who's more popular in Canada than in the U.S. There's often smaller-country pride here when Canadians get attention in the United States.
But getting attention in the U.S. can matter more, because cutting something of a dashing public figure there isn't necessarily just tinsel. For a country whose governments strive to be noticed in Washington, it can be valuable.
"The more known you are, the bigger your megaphone," said Maryscott "Scotty" Greenwood, a principal at Dentons in Washington who served as senior adviser to U.S. ambassador to Canada Gordon Giffin during the Clinton administration.
It's a megaphone Mr. Trudeau can use to advance or explain Canadian policies. On 60 Minutes, he defended his initiative to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees, which led to a little controversy south of the border over security risks.
Mr. Trudeau said Canada can choose who comes in and keep control, but he also gave a philosophical argument: that "being open and respectful" is a better way of defusing hatred "than, you know, big walls and oppressive policies."
His star appeal gives him opportunity, but it could be wasted on self-aggrandizement. It's double-edged, too; his answers on Syrian refugees, for example, could conceivably fuel security fears more than allay them.
It's all a change. Past PMs couldn't get attention. Stephen Harper was personally conservative, too, and wasn't going to make a splash in U.S. media. He confined most attempts to Fox News and financial media to talk up the Canadian economy.
But politics, and foreign policy, means advancing your narrative, and not just on Wall Street. Canadian PMs have been weak at that.
Now, Mr. Trudeau has a chance at a higher profile that might change that a little. The state dinner is hosted by a lame-duck president. The celebrity might be ephemeral. But he's trying to make the moment bigger while it's there.
Campbell Clark