On This Date In History...

Forty years ago today, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the fourth ballot winner of the Liberal leadership. You can watch the victory clip in the CBC archives.

One of my first history essays I wrote in undergrad was on the 1968 convention and it was an absolutely fascinating leadership race to study up on. What was really remarkable was that there seemed to be both a certain inevitability for a Trudeau win but, at the same time, this was a guy who'd been pegged as a 75-1 long shot at the start of the campaign and who nobody knew a year beforehand. Had Pearson not promoted Trudeau to Justice when he did, had Jean Marchand spoken better English, had Trudeau not spared with Daniel Johnson publicly, had Mitchell Sharp not dropped out and endorsed him...well, history could have been a lot different.

I dug out my old essay and present a dozen tid-bits about the '68 campaign - some well known, some not so much:

1. When first asked if he was going to run following Pearson's resignation, Trudeau answered "are you serious?"

2. What really launched Trudeau's leadership was the perfectly timed Divorce Bill and criminal code changes he brought in as Justice Minister a few weeks before Pearson resigned. This legislation upset one Cabinet Minister who sarcastically suggested their slogan be: "For abortion, homosexuality and easy divorce - vote Liberal!"

3. In his memoirs, Paul Martin Sr. claimed that "like any good puppet-master (Pearson) was pulling the strings behind the scenes".

4. The '68 race marked the third failed attempt for Paul Senior at Liberal leadership. It would eventually take five tries before someone named Paul Martin finally won a leadership convention.

5. The always fun Quebec caucus nearly revolted against Trudeau in the days leading up to the vote and threatened to support Winters, until Jean Marchand quashed the revolt.

6. Trudeau only officially entered the race February 16th. Runner up Robert Winters didn't declare until March 1st. Compare that to the marathon the 2006 leadership race was.

7. Paul Hellyer paid $2,000 for the rights to use the Broadway song "hey now Dow Jones" as his theme at convention.

8. Trudeau got 26% of the media coverage during the campaign - second highest was Mitchell Sharp at 10%.

9. A live mic overheard Judy LaMarsh telling Hellyer “Don’t let that bastard win Paul...He isn’t even a Liberal” at the convention.

10. During his convention speech, John Turner said he wasn't running to help him win a hypothetical convention in 1984.

11. One of Mitchell Sharp's advisors, a young Jean Chretien, moved with Sharp to Trudeau on the Wednesday of convention week.

12. Lloyd Henderson was a fringe candidate in the race who got zero votes at convention, despite the fact that his wife was a voting delegate. So I guess, it retrospect, it could have been worse for Scott Brison in '06...

Bart's Books - Mulroney's Memoirs

It’s been interesting reading through Brian Mulroney's Memoirs over the past two weeks, especially given the whirlwind of controversy that has enveloped him. Although the book is over a thousand pages long, it’s a great source of information and fascinating enough that I could probably have read another couple hundred pages. And even though Mulroney is arrogant, spiteful, and incredibly self-biased throughout the book, I can’t help but feeling a little bit sorry for him over the Schreiber stuff. And that sympathy alone is proof enough that he has injected some personal humanity into the book. In short, Memoirs is one of the best political books I’ve read in years.

Unlike Bill Clinton’s equally lengthy autobiography, Mulroney doesn’t dwell on his childhood and plunges into content that will appeal to politicos within 30 pages. Mulroney’s recap of young Tory events, political conventions, and his early encounters with politicians of the day like Diefenbaker or Paul Martin Sr. are as interesting as the stories from his time as PM. Mulroney also manages to tie early events to later ones by including journal entries from his time as PM throughout the book.

As for the man himself and his record? Mulroney was one of the most successful Prime Ministers on the international scene in Canadian history. He led the charge against apartheid in South Africa, negotiated Acid Rain and Free Trade treaties with the Americans, and certainly appears to have managed G7 politics with finesse – at least by his accounts. Given the amount of ink he uses to recount his many fights with Margaret Thatcher on apartheid, it’s clear that Mulroney regards it as his finest accomplishment as Prime Minister and he certainly deserves full marks for moving Canada into a leadership role internationally on the file.

That’s the good. As you might expect, Mulroney glosses over the black marks on his government. The parade of ministerial resignations is casually ignored and some clever accounting numbers are used to paint his lackluster economic record in a positive light. However, Mulroney does anything but ignore his largest failing – instead, the national unity struggles of the day are centre stage throughout the book.

Mulroney’s university thesis was on Quebec politics and he won the PC leadership on a promise of a Quebec breakthrough. For Mulroney, this was really his raison d'être in politics and, because of that, he considers the end of Meech “a death in the family” that has left him with “a throbbing sense of loss for one of the greatest might-have-beens in Canada’s 140 year history”. It’s truly remarkable just how many references Mulroney makes to Meech throughout the book and how virulent and vindictive he becomes when discussing the deal which was “suffocated in a cruel act of political infanticide by the premier of Newfoundland.” That’s just one of at least 20 or 30 pejorative references to Clyde Wells throughout the book. And Wells got off easy compared to the man who haunts Mulroney still.

When Memoirs was first launched, there was a big brouhaha over its attacks on Trudeau. Mulroney is a vicious critic of the 1982 constitutional repatriation in the book and takes every opportunity to belittle Trudeau and his accomplishments. The weird thing is, the journal entries pre-1987 where Trudeau is mentioned are mostly positive – it's clear that Mulroney can’t forgive Trudeau for having the audacity to speak out against a constitutional deal that P.E.T. (and many Canadians) clearly could not accept on an intellectual level. Just as it was Trudeau’s right to attack Meech, Mulroney certainly has the right to fight back in his memoirs but he loses all credibility when he resorts to ad hominen attacks, trying to discredit Trudeau because he didn’t serve in the military 40 years before the Meech affair (and, in that sentence, the “he didn’t serve in the military” refers to Trudeau, although it should could just as easily apply to Brian). It appears Mulroney himself would agree with my assessment in a deliciously ironic passage, just 12 pages after his attack on Trudeau’s military record:

I may well be wrong, but I think [Trudeau] mitigated whatever value his arguments might otherwise command by such a violent and vicious diatribe against so many people –living and dead – that he appears unhinged.

But these are just the sort of fun contradictions that make the book an enjoyable read, even for Liberals. How can you do anything but chuckle when Mulroney attacks the Liberals for their free trade flip flop when he railed against Crosbie’s free trade proposal during the ’83 PC leadership convention? Or when he attacks Joe Clark for allowing provinces to opt out of a federal program? That’s all to be expected in a memoir and when I move on to Chretien’s after this, I wouldn’t expect it to be any different. After all, this is Mulroney’s version of events, not a historical dissertation. A historical dissertation might say that criticism of Mulroney over his lack of experience in ’76 was fair game. A historical account might conclude that the Tories ’88 victory was not solely because of Mulroney’s soaring popularity. A historical account might not quote hundreds of positive newspaper stories about the PM and then dismiss all criticism as being part of media bias.

That said, as a historical document this book is incredibly invaluable. Appendices at the end recap behind-the-scenes conversations between the PM and Premiers about Meech and Charlottetown. And, having written a history essay or two on this time period during my years at University, I would have loved to have a resource like this book to get the official Mulroney position on such a wide range of topics. Beyond that, Memoirs works as popular political literature too. Getting a glimpse of private conversations between Mulroney and the likes of Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev makes the book worth its sticker price ($50 in Canada, $40 in the US). And the chapter where Mulroney recounts the betrayal of Lucien Bouchard has everything you could want in a political book. Compared to current hot topic political debates on Senate abolition and 1% GST cuts, the content of this book is quite riveting.

So, despite his flaws – or maybe because of them – Mulroney has written a truly impressive memoir.


Recommendation: Get a hard cover copy. Personally, I'm very glad to have a signed copy.

Other Reviews: Jason Cherniak, Pample the Moose, Kerplonka

A copy of this book was provided by Random House for review.

Weekend News

1. The latest Ipsos poll has Canadians warming to Stephen Harper. OK, so they may not yet feel about him the way Ellen DeGeneres feels about homeless puppies, but it's getting there. 58% of Canadians want a majority government and 58% of those want a Tory majority. Which means Harper is looking at a pretty solid base of 34% of people who want a Tory majority.


2. Mario Silva has proposed a national "Pierre Elliot Trudeau" holiday to celebrate Xavier Trudeau's birthday. In the words of UWHabs "I just can't wait to see the PET Day parade in downtown Calgary".


3. Although it doesn't look like we'll get a crime election, I do kind of miss the prospect of the inevitable "child pornography moment" it would be sure to generate.

"If they have a problem with the area on dangerous offenders, and that's the hill they want to die on, standing up for dangerous offenders in this country, that's their decision," Nicholson told reporters.


4. The PQ is proposing a bill that would prevent non-French speakers from running in elections or donating to political parties:

Under the proposed law, immigrants who can't speak proper French after an appropriate apprenticeship in provincially funded language courses would be forbidden from running for election in provincial and municipal elections as well as those for school boards.

PQ Leader Pauline Marois said she sees the measure as "normal.''

Normal? Well, for South Africa, maybe. But to deny someone the right to run for School Board trustee on the West Island because they can't speak French? This is absolutely insane.

Morning Round-Up

1. Yesterday, Dave Bronconnier declared September as "yellow ribbon month" in Calgary. While the timing is a bit suspect, rumour has it that October will be declared "provincial/municipal funding agreement awareness month" or "celebration of overpass construction month".



2. Brian Mulroney is in the news for "lashing out" against Pierre Trudeau. To be clear, this is a former Prime Minister trashing another former Prime Minister who has been dead for seven years, over things the later did a quarter century before becoming PM. Real classy Brian - good to see you aren't bitter or anything.

The Calgary Sun calls it a "clash of the titans", but I'm not sure it can really be considered a clash when one of the "clashers" isn't really able to, you know, respond.



3. Fred Thompson has jumped into the Presidential race and I'd have to peg him as the odds on favourite to take the Republican nomination at this point. The same way a lot of Liberals are longing for another Trudeau, one imagines a lot of Republicans would love to find the next Reagan and Thompson will probably be close enough for many of them.




4. Interesting move for McGuinty to release his full platform over a month before election day.




5. For those who missed it on Saturday, here's the link to Andrew Coyne's "politics here is uniquely stupid" column. Gotta agree, at least partially.

Whatchu Talkin About?

Macleans had some fun with google site search to find out what topics got the most play on Stephen Harper's website over the past year. For those keeping track, the environment narrowly edged out crime, taxes, accountability, health care, child care, and, in a bit of a surprise, "dancing with the stars".

So, I figured I'd run my site through the machine and see what I've been blogging about.

-Not only does he win the hamburger poll and the golfing poll, but Stephen Harper tops the equally scientific Calgary Grit poll with 1440 references. That leaves him miles ahead of Jack Layton (215), Stephane Dion (95), and Gilles Duceppe (65).

-Among Liberals, Dion is edged out by Joe Volpe (180), Gerard Kennedy (1380), and Michael Ignatieff (175). Hot on his heels are Jean Lapierre (83) and Garth Turner (42). [note: Unlike Garth Turner's blog where the only thing Garth Turner has ever talked about is Garth Turner].

-Much like Stephen Harper, I don't have a lot of time for Harper Cabinet Ministers. Peter Mackay (83) and Rona Ambrose gets decent ink (48), while Jim Flaherty (19), Lawrence Cannon (22), and Gordon O'Connor (19) have earned a bit of my time. But Maxime Bernier (9), Carole Skelton (1), and Jean-Pierre Blackburn (1) haven't exactly been setting the blogosphere on fire.

-I am, of course, always ready to blog about the important issues of the day, such as the Shane Doan kerflufle (4), Stephen Harper's stylist (11), and Jack Layton's "big ass" comments (4). [note: in fairness, "big ass" comments on this blog could be in reference to a lot of things including, ironically enough, Jack himself]

-On the historical side, Joe Clark (98) beats Pierre Trudeau (63). However, Justin Trudeau (38) does best Ben Mulroney (15).

-On a lighter note, Britney Spears drew 5 mentions, Paris Hilton got 6, and Prince Harry got 4. Lindsay Lohan has never been mentioned on this blog (...until now).