The trick to living long and prospering in politics, former Alberta premier Ralph Klein used to say, is to figure out which way the parade is going - and jump in front of it.

Watching Justin Trudeau's government on the march this week, it's clear the new prime minister is twirling the big baton in front of a very exuberant public parade.

It was a trick Stephen Harper never really figured out.

The Liberals' multiple breach of their year-end 25,000 Syrian refugee promise was a classic case of reeling in a campaign float which was drifting away from public opinion.

By switching direction to a resettlement slowdown, which is actually more like a year behind schedule than just two months, the Liberals basically bought into the Conservative refugee target and gave themselves the credit.

In doing so, they averted the logistical and optical disaster of having the surge of refugees, many who could not be absorbed by cities on a year-end deadline, confined for months to military bases which would look a lot like Christmas-season refugee camps in the eye of television cameras.

In short, they claimed victory by admitting defeat.

The climate change gabfest with the premiers on Monday was another public movement where the Liberals merely jumped in to fill a leadership vacuum created by the Conservatives.

Premiers have been moving to green up their act for years and even the oil industry kept looking for carbon price certainty to help with long-range planning, but the Harper government refused to serve as coordinator of emission reduction actions by others.

So on Monday, just by summoning premiers to a summit where nothing beyond grin-and-grip optics were delivered, Trudeau heads to Paris armed only with Harper's emission reduction goal and will still be a jolly green giant by comparison.

In short, the Liberals claimed to be fresh and clean when they merely embraced old Conservative targets the environmentalists claimed were inadequate.

Of course, parades are all style and, in the case of today's Macy's famous lineup of inflatables in New York, devoid of substance.

But while the hardest trick of all is delivering leadership which goes against public opinion, for the time being Trudeau is having a blast fronting a parade of promises primarily because Harper refused to lead it.

That's the Last Word.