ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

In contrast, Pierre Poilievre made slogans central to his brand. Before dialing them down after losing the election, he built his campaign on phrases like “Canada is Broken,� “Axe the Tax,� and making Canada the “freest country in the world.� His reliance on slogans became a signature, both praised and panned for oversimplifying complex issues.

South of the border, Donald Trump didn’t just popularize “Make America Great Again,� he trademarked it. MAGA has become a merchandising empire, a shorthand for an entire world view, and a movement unto itself.

But as Peggy Noonan noted in , something recently shifted. When Trump lashed out at his base for questioning his handling of the Epstein files, calling them “weaklings� and “past supporters,� he learned the hard way that owning the slogan doesn’t mean owning the souls of those who chant it.

Trump remains the undisputed face of MAGA, but his followers’ frustration reveals the limits of political branding. You can trademark a slogan. You can monetize unmet desire. But you can’t permanently control a movement once it has momentum.

Trump may own the words, but he can’t copyright the emotions, the resentment and pride that animate them.

He might now be realizing that the movement he ignited has a life of its own. One that might outlast him.

The gifted promoter may also be learning a painful truth about building a political brand like a consumer brand: your most loyal customers may one day reject the product. Not because they’ve stopped believing in it, but because they believe in it more purely than the person who sold it to them.

Add to this the inevitable shenanigans of the swamp Trump once promised to drain. Washington knows the man may be a force of nature, but he is not eternal. Others in the movement already aspire to lead it, some as true believers, others as career politicians preparing to outlast the current leader, or they’re JD Vance.

And that raises an odd intellectual property problem. Since Trump owns the MAGA trademark, future aspirants may need to start work now on launching the next slogan — ideally one that taps into MAGA’s nostalgia for a once-great America, while also signalling the kind of momentum that keeps restless believers from shouting their own version of Just Do It if their lives don’t improve.

Carney faces a different challenge. His “Build, Baby, Build� isn’t emotional populism. It doesn’t ask you to join a movement. It asks you to get on with it. Which is why it might age better.

But it’s not immune to the risks of sloganization. Distil a national agenda into a three-word command, and you invite people to measure progress in equally reductive terms. No cranes? No bulldozers? No ribbon cuttings? Then what exactly are we building, baby?

No one says when, exactly, we’ll know that America is once again great. Build, Baby, Build is far more tangible. Either things are built, or they aren’t. Either projects are completed, or they drag on indefinitely. Or worse, they become obsolete. Think of the now-demolished  north of Montreal and its lasting symbol: the abrupt end of Highway 13 that was meant to feed it.

Where MAGA is backward-looking in its yearning, “Build, Baby, Build� looks forward. Once the government sets its build list, the destination is no longer metaphorical. There may be no merch or ball caps, but there are hard hats and zoning changes.

It’s less about emotion, more about execution. But still, it’s just three words away from becoming a political liability.