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Justin Trudeau is a blank screen.
In Dreams from My Father, written before he was elected President, Barack Obama described himself as "a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
The presumed heir to the Liberal leadership has a similar ability to galvanize voters – millennial voters especially – in search of hope and change, without ever defining what they should hope for or what that change might be.
But if there are similarities between Obama '08 and Trudeau '13, there are also great differences, and they do not work to the Canadian's advantage.
The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) estimates that 50 per cent of voters under 29 cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election, roughly the same percentage as in 2008. By comparison, only 37 per cent turned out in 1996.
Millennials, as these young voters are called, represented about 19 per cent of all votes cast, and favoured Mr. Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney 60 per cent to 37 per cent. That 23-point spread was crucial to the Democrat's victory.
We don't know what percentage of the 150,000-plus Trudeau supporters are millennials, but the faces at many of the rallies look youthful; many of the 10,000 people who have joined as volunteers to the Trudeau campaign are young, and Mr. Trudeau has 192,000 followers on Twitter. Social media was crucial to recruiting young supporters to the Obama campaign.
The potential is there for the Trudeau Liberals to bring an entire generation of formerly tuned-out voters to the polls, just as the Democrats have done under Mr. Obama. This should deeply worry the Conservatives.
There are, nonetheless, great challenges. While the seeds of Mr. Obama's first hope-and-change campaign were sewn in the January, 2008 Iowa caucuses and harvested in that November's presidential election, Mr. Trudeau faces a long and difficult 21/2 years during which he must sustain the enthusiasm, rebuild the party's electoral machinery, work out a platform, and learn how to take a pummelling from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Another challenge: In both 2008 and 2012, Mr. Obama faced a Republican Party that was divided, dispirited and prone to suicidal impulses, from Sarah Palin to the Tea Party. The Harper Conservatives, by contrast, enjoy the advantages of power and have largely suppressed their extremist fringe.
Most important, Mr. Obama didn't just win the millennial vote; he won the minority vote, too. Hispanics voted for Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney by 71 per cent to 27 per cent. Asian Americans favoured the Democrat by a similar margin. African Americans broke for Mr. Obama better than nine-to-one.
So millennials plus minority voters were key to the Democratic victory. But things are very different in Canada.
Immigrants from the Philippines, China and India are the largest source countries and they incline toward the Conservatives. In fact, middle-class immigrant voters living in suburban communities in Ontario were a key source of support for the Conservatives in the May, 2011 election.
To win, Mr. Trudeau must bring these middle-class immigrant voters over to the Liberal Party. Exit polling data shows them concerned about the economy and safe streets. How are the Liberals to craft a message that appeals to these voters more than the one they're already hearing from the Conservatives?
And how is Mr. Trudeau to sell such a message, while also stoking the dreams of social progress and a cleaner environment so crucial to the millennials?
Exciting millennials while not frightening off economically cautious middle-class immigrants will be no easy task. No wonder the heir-apparent mostly confines himself to uplifting generalities. Specifics could get messy. And the Tory attack machine will be waiting.
Mr. Trudeau may want to keep that screen enticingly blank for as long as he possibly can.
John Ibbitson is The Globe's chief political writer in Ottawa.