Conventional wisdom is that the upcoming federal election will be about who can best manage Donald Trump. That would be a waste of everyone’s time. Trump is, as Churchill said of Russia in 1939, “a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma.” Churchill said that at another world-upside-down moment in history, just after Stalin and Hitler had concluded their surprise non-aggression pact and divided up Poland. Sudden switching of geopolitical sides has some lousy precedents.

Only two people seem able to manage Donald Trump: Melania Trump and Vladimir Putin and, possessing neither spousal authority nor nuclear weapons, no Canadian prime minister can ever have their leverage. True, we do have King Charles on our side, whom Trump clearly respects as a fellow world-class head of state and uber-celebrity. We can hope His Majesty will take the president aside at Buckingham Palace or Balmoral or wherever their upcoming visit takes place, and have a quiet word in front of the fire about knocking off the annexation talk regarding a major member of the Commonwealth. But our election can’t affect that.

Beyond all that, there isn’t actually much disagreement about what our strategy should be. Everyone thinks we should retaliate, hang tough with retaliation and help workers and small businesses adjust — though never large businesses, since they print their own money, or so many Canadians apparently believe.

We could make the election about the details of our strategy. New Liberal leader Mark Carney says his government will take all the money from our retaliatory tariffs and give it to workers hit by the U.S. tariffs. That has a superficial appeal but, like all earmarking, is basically dumb. Whatever may be the right amount of assistance for affected Canadians, only by fluke will it exactly equal the amounts raised by our own tariffs.

Plus, in what’s likely to be a generalized economic downturn, how do we identify who has been hit by the U.S. tariffs and who’s suffering from the negative multiplier effects of economic contraction? And is either really more worthy? There’s also the problem of “incidence.” If we help businesses that continue to sell into the U.S. market, then in effect our government is paying the U.S. tariffs. Trump wouldn’t mind that but we should.

We have programs, lots of them, to help people and businesses that run into difficulty in one way or another. We should stick with them and make sure they’re fully funded for the storm that is about to hit. What that mainly requires is responsible budgeting, including paring other less essential programs.

What we’re likely to get instead, of course, is vicious personal attack. In his flatter-than-Saskatchewan acceptance speech Sunday, Carney decried “divisive” politics and, in that characteristically Canadian, passive-aggressive, smugly superior way Americans so love in us, said we must never be as divided as the U.S. is.

At the very same time, Liberal TV ads were reprising that famous ad from 1988’s free-trade election in which the Canada-U.S. border is gradually erased from the map. Accusing your opponent of kneeling before the altar of Donald Trump and wanting to sell out his country is just a tad divisive, don’t you think, Mr. Carney? And so is Jean Chrétien proposing export taxes on oil and gas, which the former prime minister did in his warm-up act for Carney, fully aware such a policy would light a match to relations with Western Canada. We now have the Liberals’ list of local villains: Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith. Let the (non-divisive) vilification begin.

Not that the Conservatives will be any gentler, though they do seem a little out of date. They sent out a fundraiser just after “Carbon Tax Carney,” as they still called him, had been proclaimed leader. But Carney had just repudiated the carbon tax — and the capital gains tax hike, to boot — with an awkward smirk/grimace/giggle directed at Justin Trudeau, who was seated directly in front of him, not 10 yards away. The Conservatives would do better to switch tack and use the terminology The New York Times did in a headline on Monday: “Banker Mark Carney wins race to lead Liberal Party, and Canada.”

Some people — OK, I admit: they’re mostly economists — don’t mind the carbon tax, especially compared with all the other crazy climate policies that have so far supplemented and will now replace it. For them, “Carbon Tax Carney” isn’t such a dagger.

But nobody likes bankers. “Banker Mark Carney” would be a crueller cut by far.

It would also undermine Carney’s claim to business prowess. The business people we ordinary folk admire are entrepreneurs. Elon Musk may be obnoxious but there’s no gainsaying Tesla or SpaceX or Starlink or several other impressive innovations that he (and, yes, his many associates) brought to life. But bankers don’t do that. Nor financiers generally. They say yea or nay on putting other people’s money into investments brought before them, many of these investments having to do with ownership swaps, not entrepreneurship.

Carney is right that, unlike politicians, private-sector operators must heed the bottom line. If he were a green-eyeshades banker, that would be one thing. But his claim to fame as a banker is remaking the bottom line by greening it. He’s a green-coloured glasses banker. In the tight constraints of the Trump-tariff era, that’s not the kind of banker we need.

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