Are Canadians still willing to give Justin Trudeau a second look?

Whatever Ken McDonald, the Liberal MP for Avalon, said or meant to say about Justin Trudeau's leadership, the most cutting assessment of the prime minister published this week might have come from Jeanette Dyke, a patron of Tiny's Bar and Grill in Paradise, N.L.

«I just cannot take Justin Trudeau anymore,» she told Radio-Canada. «He has charisma … but to me he's annoying.»

Those comments speak to the most basic challenge of political leadership. The TV cameras that watch politicians daily magnify every facet and quirk of their personalities. And like a houseguest — one who can be blamed for every grievance about the economy, or the real estate market, or the price of gas — a political leader's odds of overstaying their welcome grow with each passing day.

«I think the relationship between a political leader and the people is a bit like a marriage,» Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski told reporters this week, venturing a different analogy. «After quite a few years of a marriage, sometimes things don't quite look as rosy as they were at the beginning of a relationship. And if you ask people why, they can't point to one particular thing, but it's a whole bunch of things.»

Sometimes it's small things.

«They loved him for his hair to begin with. Now they hate him for his hair,» Powlowski continued. «But is that really reason to vote the other way and vote against him?»

To hold on to power through another federal election — his fourth as leader of the Liberal Party — Trudeau probably doesn't need to be widely beloved. He probably can't hope to be.

But he still might need some of the people who are feeling just a bit tired of him right now to give him a second (or third or fourth) look.

The ups and downs of Trudeau's public image

It would not