Or at least that’s the way it used to be, until Justin Trudeau took the reins.

Back in 2015, when the fresh-faced son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau — who served in the same era as Gough Whitlam and was very much in the same social democratic mould — took office, progressives around the world cheered the handsome new leader who promised an era of change.

Today, Trudeau is slipping in the polls, beset by questions about his judgment in the wake of a disastrous trip to India, and no longer swooned over as the world’s progressive poster boy.

And how in an era when a new generation of young leaders from New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern to France’s Emmanuel Macron are redefining politics and getting the job done, did Canada get saddled with a prime minister widely regarded as the Fredo Corleone of the Anglosphere?

It’s time.

As with so many political trainwrecks, it started with the “it’s time” factor.

Justin Trudeau became leader of Canada’s Liberals — known as the “natural governing party of Canada” because they win two out of every three elections — after the party’s disastrous run under Michael Ignatieff, a politician who had brains to spare but had, as one Canadian told Saturday Extra, all the magnetism of an undertaker.

In Trudeau the Liberals found the opposite — and a winning combination because Canadians, just like Australians (think Kevin Rudd or, indeed, Gough Whitlam) are subject to the impulse to try something new after years of staid and steady leadership.

And after a whirlwind campaign in 2015 the Liberal Party swept the conservative government of Stephen Harper from office in a landslide, despite gaffes including a widely circulated clip of Trudeau staring blankly at a journalist who had asked him what he would do on his first day in office.

Having won, he was hailed around the world as much for his looks as his politics: “Canada’s new prime minister Justin Trudeau is super hot” gushed US Weekly. “No other leader in the world is as sexy,” declared the Daily Mail.

As recently as last year, news website Buzzfeed offered up a listicle entitled: “Literally just 27 really hot photos of Justin Trudeau.”

For Canadians, often stereotyped as worthy if unexciting, it was a sudden case of cool by association.

A former adviser to Harper says the election came down to perceptions and “the contrast between the cerebral, calculating Harper, who was happiest governing via a stack of Cabinet memorandums, and the happy-go-lucky Trudeau, who was happiest posing with voters, crashing wedding receptions and mouthing sunny bromides (his catchphrases were “sunny ways” and “hope and hard work”, at least half of which he embodied) to large cheering crowds”.

In office, Trudeau quickly appointed a Cabinet consisting of 15 men and 15 women (“because it’s 2015”, he famously explained) and personally greeted Syrian refugees at the airport.

But early on there were signs of trouble.

Despite Trudeau’s effusive feminism (a few weeks ago, he was the subject of much mockery when he corrected someone for saying “mankind” when “peoplekind” is his preferred terminology) in 2016 he was accused of aggressively jostling a female MP on the floor of Parliament. He apologised but it made many wonder how much of his progressive demeanour was just a pose.

If Justin Trudeau’s government is all about public performance, then it should come as no surprise that he places so much emphasis on wearing the right costume.

In what may go down as one of the greatest virtue signals of all time, Trudeau wore rainbow socks with the words “Eid Mubarak” to last year’s gay pride parade in Toronto, an event the Guardian covered under the headline, “Can Justin Trudeau’s socks bring peace to the world?”

During a recent trip to India, Trudeau, his wife and their two children spent eight days traipsing around the country wearing traditional sherwanis and saris, and the PM even showed off his Bollywood dance moves. But there was a dark side to this, too.

On the same trip, Jaspal Atwal, a Canadian Sikh with suspected links to a Khalistani terrorist group who was once convicted of the attempted murder of an Indian Cabinet official, showed up at a Trudeau reception in Mumbai as an invited guest.

“It has been one of the worst planned visits that I have seen,” Harsh Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London told Bloomberg news service.

Despite his haplessness, Trudeau has been lucky — both for who he is and who he isn’t. Born the son of Canadian political royalty, he was blessed in his campaign for being able to play the anti-Harper and, in office, by being the anti-Trump.

Today, though, the bloom is decidedly off the rose. His approval levels have dropped to their lowest point since he took office, and though he will likely retain office at the next election 18 months from now, it could see him leading a minority government.

“Trudeau has natural political skill,” a former Harper adviser says. “He is charismatic and his staff did an exceptional job putting him in situations that played to his strengths.”

It’s a story as old as democratic politics itself and a good reminder of what voters everywhere might as well think of as Trudeau’s law: When the choice is between the cool kid and the grown-up, vote for the grown-up.