Can we please stop saying that Trudeau needs to hit back?

In this morning's Globe, Lawrence Martin worries that Justin Trudeau's decision to "turn the other cheek" to CPC attack ads dooms him to follow in the footsteps of Dion and Ignatieff. It's a line of argument I've encountered often since JT's "crowning" (as we are calling it, apparently) as LPC leader, and it's a bloody disgrace to lines of argument everywhere. First of all, do we have any evidence that attack ads were determinative in the last elections? I admit I have not done exhaustive research, but it's certainly not a contention that's attained the status of orthodoxy. Even if attack ads were damning for Dion and Ignatieff, it was probably because both candidates had a lot of vulnerabilities. Both men would have made competent (I think excellent) PMs, but neither was a particularly good politician. Attack ads just reminded Canadians that Dion was a scholarly Parisian mouse and Ignatieff was a bookish Imperial Russian count, if a slightly rustic, folksy one. Trudeau has been repeatedly compared to Caesar, but maybe Caesar's what we need, as our recent repeated attempts to get Claudius, the reluctant academic emperor, elected demonstrate. Whatever his shortcomings, JT is popular and charismatic, and Harper's attacks come off less as bullying and more as spite. For better or worse, Harper's the weird kid who never takes off his headphones and Trudeau's on the swim team. No clever dis formulated in the AV room after hours is going to change that.