A politician from a different age

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/03/2024 (586 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In his play Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare opined that, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

That may well be the case in the long run, but it’s rarer in the immediacy of obituaries.

By now, most Canadians who follow the news will have read the legion of obituaries for Brian Mulroney, Canada’s prime minister from 1984 to 1993.

By and large, they will have read more about big ideas that went forward (some popular, some not) — launching the GST, gaining free trade with the United States, his role in the fight against South African apartheid, installing changes that turned around a sputtering Canadian economy and putting in place key environmental agreements — than they have about his failures, including the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord, his personal involvement in the Airbus scandal and a disastrous electoral collapse that wiped out the federal Progressive Conservative party.

Mulroney was known for his soft and personal diplomacy, and for an ability, even after retiring from federal politics, to help move Canadian causes forwards from well behind the scenes. A pleasant cajoler rather than a hardnosed negotiator (though he could do that, too), you could say he performed very well in soft politics.

He was also a politician who provoked strong opinions — just before he stepped down, his personal popularity stood at just 12 per cent, the lowest level ever measured for a sitting prime minister.

To this day, Mulroney’s legacy can still lead to an argument, especially over the issue of the introduction of the GST. While a public opinion touchstone at the time — and for some, ever since — the sales tax certainly turned the federal fiscal situation around, becoming such a mainstay that no governing party has moved to remove it.

“I actually did govern not for good headlines in 10 days but for a better Canada in 10 years,” he wrote in his memoirs. “I paid the price in media hostility and public disapproval. But I did so knowingly and willingly. Leadership … is about taking positions you believe to be in Canada’s long-term interest and sticking to them.”

Imagine that: leading by policy, rather than by polls.

There is, perhaps, another death to mourn here as well. And that’s the death of an era where there was more to politicians than bareknuckle winner-take-all politics.

One thing that both Mulroney’s friends and foes highlighted was his basic common decency: that, if they suffered a loss, Mulroney was often one of the first to reach out and offer condolences. That he was a genuine, personable and caring man, willing to reach out to others.

One thing that we may well miss in Canadian politics at this point is that sort of common decency. (Truth be told, we miss it everywhere else as well.)

In politics at both the provincial and federal level, we’ve lurched further than ever to the land of hostile hot-takes and nasty gotcha clips, headlined by outright falsehoods or personal attacks.

Saskatchewan’s governing party wouldn’t have a platform it if wasn’t blaming Justin Trudeau for all its ills — Alberta’s government dismissed pharmacare for its citizens as soon as the federal Liberals and NDP negotiated the bones of the plan’s structure, without the benefit of even having the details in its hands.

And just try to imagine Pierre Poilievre or Andrew Scheer calling a Liberal or NDP to say they understood that their opponent was going through a hard time and wished that opponent well.

Perhaps it could still happen. Perhaps it does.

But it seems far from certain that even Brian Mulroney’s great skill at quiet diplomacy could heal those rifts.