Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote: “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
He was speaking of the citizen in relation to his community, but the situation for political leaders is rather different. They are compelled to wear more than one face when addressing the multitude – especially in democracies, which are made up of different constituencies with differing interests. Things get more complicated, however, when two different public faces are in tension with one another, as has been the case for Mark Carney since he assumed the premiership of Canada a year ago this week.
