Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The Mulroney Legacy
Let's get this much established right away: in a segment of life with few moral absolutes, Peter C. Newman is 100% in the right and M. Brian Mulroney is 100% in the wrong. I have no trouble believing that Newman didn't tell Mulroney that he was taping their phone conversations. I have very little trouble believing that Newman actively led Mulroney to believe that he was not taping them. Doesn't matter. Newman's a journalist and Mulroney was a Prime Minister, and suggesting that Mulroney ought not to have realized that anything said to one of Canada's most prominent wags stretches too far even my rather elastic capacity for belief in the former's foolishness. If, in the lowest-stakes form of politics to be covered by any media at all, it can be drilled into a Vice President (Operations & Finance)'s head to say nothing to a student journalist that is not either fair game for print or preceded by an explicit acknowledgement on the part of the fourth estatian that it's not, a Prime Minister can be careful who he says what to. This is especially true of Prime Ministers who have previously been burnt by the inability to distinguish between reporters and friends (hello, "There's no whore like an old whore").
The surprise in what Mulroney said to Newman isn't so much what he thought; his delusions of grandeur competed for prominence only with that spectacular moose jaw of his. Rather, the surprise is that Mulroney would be so candid with *anybody*. Even the most arrogant among us (me) tends to slap on an aura of what he hopes is an endearing modesty in the company of even the closest of friends.
Apart from the appallingly bad judgment shown by Lyin' Brian in even making the comments he did, however, let's examine their veracity. Was Brian Mulroney the best Prime Minister since John A.? Did he rescue the country from Trudeau's mismanagement? No.
I like to think that my contrarian cred is pretty well-established - when I'm well-rested, I like to oppose conventional wisdom just because it gets a lot of people all hot-and-bothered (to say nothing of the fact that we've been governed since government was created by conventional wisdom, and look where *that*'s gotten us). So naturally I would like nothing better than to be able to come before you today and explain why Mulroney was correct, and the 92% of Canadians who did not approve of his performance as Prime Minister wrong. Unfortunately, I can't - even overwhelming majorities can't be mistaken *all* of the time.
I'll take a page here out of Stephen Lewis (on whom more on later, if motivation allows) and begin by acknowledging some good in Mulroney. Unlike the vast majority of Canadian Prime Ministers - indeed, all of them except himself, MacDonald, Diefenbaker, and Trudeau - Mulroney possessed the political courage to dare mighty things. While the Chretien-(and especially) Martin years have been reminiscent of the King-St. Laurent barren wasteland of reform or innovation, the Mulroney years were interesting largely because Mulroney himself had the guts to make them so: he tried *twice* to bring Quebec into the constitutional fold, created the GST, and fought (and won) an election on free trade, and issue that had brought down no less cynically successful a politician as Wilfred Laurier, seventy-five or so years previous. In terms of ambition, he's undoubtedly in the MacDonald-Trudeau ranks (Diefenbaker must be denied any claim to greatness by reason of his ambitions' total lack of coherence. But still, the man was at least *interesting*). Unlike either MacDonald or Trudeau, however, Mulroney didn't apply his ambition towards the attainment of any well-articulated goals, but rather to the attainment and retention of his own power - the Lord Voldemort of Canadian politics, except with a bigger chin.
This is not to say that Trudeau and MacDonald weren't guilty of their own opportunistic manipulations of the political process or abuses of power, or even that these were less severe or numerous than those in which Mulroney engaged, but rather that each of those two men would go to great and often unethical lengths to retain power because there was something they wanted to do with power: MacDonald wanted to make Confederation a success, while Trudeau wanted to entrench individual rights and keep Quebec in Canada, and each man had significant accomplishments - the railway and the addition of three provinces in MacDonald's case, and the Constitution Act 1982 and a decisive referendum win in Trudeau's - that were the result of their desires. Mulroney? Well, he was against free trade with the United States; one of his greatest accomplishments was free trade with the United States. He favoured classically liberal economics; he implemented the GST and *still* ran deficits larger than those of the Trudeau governments that he so rightly condemned (yes, he governed during a recession that wasn't his fault - there's only so large a gap between stated beliefs and actions that can be justified by circumstance, however).
One of the knocks on Trudeau - generally a justified one - is that he let a lot of sub-par talent sit around the cabinet table. At least most of his ministers managed to avoid being the target of criminal investigations (and none of them went on to become the most successful sovereigntist politician since Réné Levesque, either).
In fact, pretty well everything that Mulroney blamed Trudeau for, he went on to become as or more guilty of. Did Trudeau, through patriating the constitution, drive a wedge between Quebeckers and other Canadians? No more than did Mulroney through his totally ill-conceived Meech and Charlottetown accords (whose notorious "distinct society" clause, incidentally, is revealed in Newman's book to be, in Mulroney's opinion, meaningless window-dressing: take that, Québec nationalists!). Did Trudeau centralize power in the PMO? Sure - which only gave Mulroney a head start in his own autocratic efforts.
And this is where Paul Wells gets it wrong: Stephen Harper isn't Mulroney minus the vision. He's Mulroney with a more modest vision, but at least one rooted in a coherent political philosophy, however wrong-headed. At this point, his "peevish whining" is preferably to Paul Martin's dithering. But Martin's dithering will is miles ahead of Mulroney's unprincipled daring.
Unfairly maligned? I can think of none who have earned our scorn more.
|
Let's get this much established right away: in a segment of life with few moral absolutes, Peter C. Newman is 100% in the right and M. Brian Mulroney is 100% in the wrong. I have no trouble believing that Newman didn't tell Mulroney that he was taping their phone conversations. I have very little trouble believing that Newman actively led Mulroney to believe that he was not taping them. Doesn't matter. Newman's a journalist and Mulroney was a Prime Minister, and suggesting that Mulroney ought not to have realized that anything said to one of Canada's most prominent wags stretches too far even my rather elastic capacity for belief in the former's foolishness. If, in the lowest-stakes form of politics to be covered by any media at all, it can be drilled into a Vice President (Operations & Finance)'s head to say nothing to a student journalist that is not either fair game for print or preceded by an explicit acknowledgement on the part of the fourth estatian that it's not, a Prime Minister can be careful who he says what to. This is especially true of Prime Ministers who have previously been burnt by the inability to distinguish between reporters and friends (hello, "There's no whore like an old whore").
The surprise in what Mulroney said to Newman isn't so much what he thought; his delusions of grandeur competed for prominence only with that spectacular moose jaw of his. Rather, the surprise is that Mulroney would be so candid with *anybody*. Even the most arrogant among us (me) tends to slap on an aura of what he hopes is an endearing modesty in the company of even the closest of friends.
Apart from the appallingly bad judgment shown by Lyin' Brian in even making the comments he did, however, let's examine their veracity. Was Brian Mulroney the best Prime Minister since John A.? Did he rescue the country from Trudeau's mismanagement? No.
I like to think that my contrarian cred is pretty well-established - when I'm well-rested, I like to oppose conventional wisdom just because it gets a lot of people all hot-and-bothered (to say nothing of the fact that we've been governed since government was created by conventional wisdom, and look where *that*'s gotten us). So naturally I would like nothing better than to be able to come before you today and explain why Mulroney was correct, and the 92% of Canadians who did not approve of his performance as Prime Minister wrong. Unfortunately, I can't - even overwhelming majorities can't be mistaken *all* of the time.
I'll take a page here out of Stephen Lewis (on whom more on later, if motivation allows) and begin by acknowledging some good in Mulroney. Unlike the vast majority of Canadian Prime Ministers - indeed, all of them except himself, MacDonald, Diefenbaker, and Trudeau - Mulroney possessed the political courage to dare mighty things. While the Chretien-(and especially) Martin years have been reminiscent of the King-St. Laurent barren wasteland of reform or innovation, the Mulroney years were interesting largely because Mulroney himself had the guts to make them so: he tried *twice* to bring Quebec into the constitutional fold, created the GST, and fought (and won) an election on free trade, and issue that had brought down no less cynically successful a politician as Wilfred Laurier, seventy-five or so years previous. In terms of ambition, he's undoubtedly in the MacDonald-Trudeau ranks (Diefenbaker must be denied any claim to greatness by reason of his ambitions' total lack of coherence. But still, the man was at least *interesting*). Unlike either MacDonald or Trudeau, however, Mulroney didn't apply his ambition towards the attainment of any well-articulated goals, but rather to the attainment and retention of his own power - the Lord Voldemort of Canadian politics, except with a bigger chin.
This is not to say that Trudeau and MacDonald weren't guilty of their own opportunistic manipulations of the political process or abuses of power, or even that these were less severe or numerous than those in which Mulroney engaged, but rather that each of those two men would go to great and often unethical lengths to retain power because there was something they wanted to do with power: MacDonald wanted to make Confederation a success, while Trudeau wanted to entrench individual rights and keep Quebec in Canada, and each man had significant accomplishments - the railway and the addition of three provinces in MacDonald's case, and the Constitution Act 1982 and a decisive referendum win in Trudeau's - that were the result of their desires. Mulroney? Well, he was against free trade with the United States; one of his greatest accomplishments was free trade with the United States. He favoured classically liberal economics; he implemented the GST and *still* ran deficits larger than those of the Trudeau governments that he so rightly condemned (yes, he governed during a recession that wasn't his fault - there's only so large a gap between stated beliefs and actions that can be justified by circumstance, however).
One of the knocks on Trudeau - generally a justified one - is that he let a lot of sub-par talent sit around the cabinet table. At least most of his ministers managed to avoid being the target of criminal investigations (and none of them went on to become the most successful sovereigntist politician since Réné Levesque, either).
In fact, pretty well everything that Mulroney blamed Trudeau for, he went on to become as or more guilty of. Did Trudeau, through patriating the constitution, drive a wedge between Quebeckers and other Canadians? No more than did Mulroney through his totally ill-conceived Meech and Charlottetown accords (whose notorious "distinct society" clause, incidentally, is revealed in Newman's book to be, in Mulroney's opinion, meaningless window-dressing: take that, Québec nationalists!). Did Trudeau centralize power in the PMO? Sure - which only gave Mulroney a head start in his own autocratic efforts.
And this is where Paul Wells gets it wrong: Stephen Harper isn't Mulroney minus the vision. He's Mulroney with a more modest vision, but at least one rooted in a coherent political philosophy, however wrong-headed. At this point, his "peevish whining" is preferably to Paul Martin's dithering. But Martin's dithering will is miles ahead of Mulroney's unprincipled daring.
Unfairly maligned? I can think of none who have earned our scorn more.
