Encounters with Eleven Prime Ministers
This book essays political leadership in modern Canada. Based on impressions and personal encounters with each of the last eleven Prime Ministers, their followers, reflections on their paths to power, and their legacies still being written on the pages of history – all in the context of their times as observed through the eyes of an insider, political activist and participant.
Encounters with Eleven Prime Ministers
“The two most important days in your life
are the day you are born and the day you
find out why.”
– Mark Twain
Ihave been privileged to observe the last eleven Prime Ministers of Canada and interact with each of them since my first political experiences in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. What follows are my reflections and personal impressions on leadership and their leadership as Prime Ministers1 for almost three score years. For the record, I have included my take on their legacies.
Factors of Leadership
Like all politicians have, I became obsessed with the factors that made a leader a leader early on. Was leadership a natural or learned skill set? What unique amalgam of oratory, ambition, character,2 persistence,3 doggedness, detachment, decisiveness,4 empathy, intelligence, optimism,5 personality, experiences, energy, memory, common sense, ideas, judgement, temperament, robust health,6 and most especially, self-awareness of one’s persona, separate wannabee leaders from the pinnacle of leadership?
Beyond a leader’s inherent aptitudes for leadership is the ability to be, or exhibit, empathy, if not compassion, with members of the public. Words are the leader’s tools of the trade. Body language in the age of visuality is equally important. Perception becomes reality. To speak and invoke inspiration or have the gift of persuasion to groups, large and small, spontaneously or with careful forethought is a necessary talent.7 Of course, per force, a leader needs to be a quick study, well informed and a good listener – a quick and thoughtful responder. A major criterion of leadership is to attract a loyal team that are skilled and comfortable in a team environment under the public’s glare.
Keeping a cool head when other lose theirs in a crisis is the epitome of leadership. No leader is perfect. He8 must know how to pace himself, and how to organize his time to allow him to reflect.9 Mistakes are often made in haste. How to recoup is a necessary skill. For this, he needs a tight rapid response team he trusts to get at the facts of any surprise, for in these modern times, there are many swift changing parts at home and abroad. The public has access to more platforms of news and is bombarded with information and the wide range of issues from ‘natural disasters’ to ‘identity’ to ‘nuke’ weaponry that is both constant and astonishing. So, a leader and his team must keep up with fast breaking news, separating facts from fiction or opinion.
Most politicians aspire to leadership, but so very few achieve their goal. Usually a long preoccupation and a lust for ‘making a difference’ in the public area or self-aggrandizement compels some to study, practice, prepare, and reach for the political mountaintop, master or mistress of all they perceive. Most leaders have a deep vein of narcissism. But do they possess that special, elusive alchemy, the ‘royal jelly’?10
Each successful leader is a master of the ‘dark’ arts of politics, and as Churchill once wrote, needs, at times, to be a ‘butcher’ to chop errant supporters especially his Cabinet, whilst he keeps his own counsel. To be a skillful self-promotor and propagandist while appearing sincere and authentic, even reticent, is an essential talent to become a leader and practice leadership.
While the public understands ambition, it usually prefers those who do not appear power hungry.
Leaders will find their groove like a championship golfer. Once in that groove, some leaders, unsure of their own talents, demonize their political predecessors ‘who always leave a mess’ and are quick to ‘project’ blame for their mishaps on the ‘others’.11 Other leaders disdain this narrative and eschew this line of politics, believing their own merit and ideas will win the day.
A Leader’s Coterie
The leader’s coterie quickly learns to align their ‘echo chamber’ with their leader’s policies or stances to spread his ‘word’. A leader of necessity to be a leader needs to attract a tight circle of followers and acolytes, as he practices perfecting his style. Can his coterie avoid the public eye? Rarely. If they don’t, the leader usually suffers. It is tempting for them to bask in the reflecting light of their leader’s halo.12 Yet, they both conspire to transmit nuanced propaganda if not ‘fake’ news to justify their hold on power for the ‘people’, or they place a brighter gloss of ‘values’ on their inexplicable behaviour to distract public attention from other potent mistakes of other issues while they seek to recoup. Leaders are driven by the belief that such conduct is permissible for they are offering a ‘better’ way forward for the nation. The ‘people’ are the object of their narrative. Words are coined like the ‘average Canadian’, the ‘working Canadian’, the ‘forgotten Canadian’, and recently, the favourite, the new sweet spot, the ‘middle-class’13 to focus on this torqued market once empowered. Every leader, or his followers, are loath and reluctant to take responsibility for his own flaws or their mistakes, but rather light an incendiary torch to his adversaries to distract attention while seeking to maintain public empathy, if not sympathy, and supporter affinity.
Chief of Staff
Many Prime Ministers get off to a rocky start as the Prime Minister’s election crew is suddenly confronted by a constant avalanche of problems and tasks that assail a Prime Minister once he accedes to office. One important key to this dilemma are the skill sets of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff formerly called Principal Secretary.
John Diefenbaker never truly solved this endemic problem in his office. Mike Pearson appointed a youthful Jim Coutts who quickly grew in the job and matured later when Pierre Trudeau, after disastrous mistakes in his first period in office and some turnovers, appointed Jim, his Principal Secretary, in 1974 for the balance of his term in government.
Joe Clark’s office disorganization caused him problems from the outset of his short administration especially his first trip abroad with luggage woes, and never fully recovered. John Turner’s advisors were visibly divided from the outset and this damaged his Prime Ministership. Brian Mulroney had his problems at the outset of his administration, as did Jean Chrétien. When Chrétien appointed Jean Pelletier, his long-time friend and law school classmate, former Mayor of Quebec City, defeated Liberal candidate and shrewd political organizer, his office began to purr like a well-oiled machine. Pelletier became Chrétien’s alter ego and brought judgment and gravitas to every problem, large or small.14
Paul Martin’s office failed to reach out beyond his tight knit entourage and assay the problems from within the Party and without to his detriment.
Stephen Harper had a turnover of Chiefs of Staff and suffered as a consequence.
Justin Trudeau’s office was stable at the outset.
A leader must also be a strategist and a tactician in the day-to-day onslaught of crises under the watchful eye of the media. As Churchill once wrote, “I could never be responsible for a strategy which excluded the offensive principle. A leader must know where and how to take the offense.” A leader must know how to leave issues alone until he contributes to resolutions.
One common trait in a leader’s longevity occurs when he displays restraint and yes, humility. It is tempting for leaders to fall in love with public adulation and forget that public admiration is transitory at best. To refrain from gloating about political victory or political successes is the mask a true leader devoted to the public interest should seek to wear.15
Ronald Reagan once queried how a politician could enter and maintain public office without being an actor. Reagan, like Lincoln and both Roosevelts, was a master of story-telling and could spin narratives to explain his actions. Obama loved telling stories about himself. So, telling stories is part of the art of leadership.
Charles de Gaulle wrote in his memoirs on leadership, “There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.” De Gaulle relished keeping his own counsel and his distance from even his closest confreres.16
A leader, like a good chess or bridge player, should be able to think two or three steps ahead of his opponents, even his own advisers, and never disclose what he is really thinking. To reach out and garner advice from a larger range of voices who he trusts beyond his own circle and know when, where, and who to seek such advice broadens a leader’s perspectives. Group think is an anathema to rational decision-making.
The Leader’s Entourage
The leader of necessity runs his entourage like a modern enterprise. The ‘nuts and bolts’ are vital to success. The choice of the traditional ‘bag man’, the leader’s key money raiser, is an essential ingredient in the leader’s operation, who in turn, requires good astute ties to the financial community and is careful to avoid conflicts of interest and flying under the radar. In addition, a leader now needs a modern fundraising crew to ply the cyberspace to organize and gain their own adherents in the social media. In this modern era of legal issues drowning politics, a key legal adviser and a rapid response legal team also remains imperative. His election campaign chair must be on the ready at all times. Key strategists are also essential who can debate, devise, and agree on the steps forward with the leader’s assent.
Ever Present Polling
Pollsters who provide daily glimpses of public opinion is now deemed requisite for the leader to nuance his message. Focus groups complete the leader’s arsenal to test and shape his message. The social media now plays a powerful role in the leader’s interactive tool box. Still, public events, large and small, are necessary to allow the leader to read public opinions and keep in touch with his vital supporters. No doubt, Prime Ministers’ pollsters have taken on a sinister role with little, or no, transparency.
Truth and Propaganda
There is a paradox between advocating truth and facts versus palpable fiction.17 Orwell wrote how autocratic regimes burnished their propaganda machinery. To persuade the public is not necessarily successful based on the presentation of only a careful construct of facts. T.S. Elliot wrote, “We tend to substitute emotion for thought”. The leader should be able to turn on the emotions tap to reach out and persuade the public and his followers. Leaders should be able to seize a ‘teaching moment’ to instigate a redirection in public opinions. Hierarchies surround power. C.S. Lewis considered how these relationships interact to gain loyalties. How ‘men not yet bad will do very bad things to gain access to the inside, to be close to power’. At times, this emotive passion is difficult to abate. It lies buried in the human condition.
Luck
Above all, a leader needs luck to be successful. Techies glued to social media are now essential and leaders now respond quickly to erupting issues. Patience while waiting for a favourable climate to move towards a leader’s goals is just good politics. Timing remains everything in politics.
Reacting To The Unexpected
Sometimes the unexpected can tell more about the instincts of a leader for leadership. When Pierre Trudeau attended a St. Baptiste Day parade in Montreal, he was pelted by separatist extremists in the crowd below. Rather than be pulled to safety, he insisted on keeping his place cementing in the minds of the public, a man of courage and strength. Strong elements within a leader attract followership. Sometimes unpredictable events can be a teaching moment. When Trudeau was accosted during the FLQ crisis and the War Measures Act was hastily imposed, he was asked by a TV reporter what he intended to do next, Trudeau replied, “Just watch me”. It was another teaching moment.
Crisis Management
No better insight to a Prime Minister’s skill is crisis management. Quickly getting the facts, organizing a quick response team, and arriving at a solution or solutions all in public view is an essential attribute of leadership.18
A Leader Must Be A Leader
‘A leader must be a leader’, a phrase I helped coin with Terry O’Malley (the master creative director at Vickers and Benson) in 1979 for the faltering Pierre Trudeau, when in his lackadaisical meandering campaign for election as Prime Minister ran out of steam in 1979. Preoccupied with family issues and episodic energy, his appetite for politics and most importantly, his groove, suffered as Trudeau lost to the unlikely leadership Joe Clark in the 1979 national election. Trudeau had dithered too long, and he gave up his majority.19 Joe Clark gained power, though Trudeau led the Liberals in the popular vote in the 1979 national election results. Still, an instinctive leader cannot easily give up. His drive and ambition, like an alter ego, did not allow him to go quietly into the twilight zone. His major political ambition had not been achieved. So it is with almost all political leaders. Once in the public limelight, in the public arena, it is hard to return to the shadows, away from public attention.
A Prime Minister’s Powers
What is often overlooked by Canadians and observers is the almost absolute power a leader in Canada gains once he reaches the pinnacle of politics – the Prime Ministership. He chooses the head of the state, the Governor General, and the Lt. Governor of each province. The Prime Minister is the absolute master of his Party, his Cabinet, the elected members of his Party, the government bureaucracy, and all government agencies. Most of his appointments, in the thousands, serve at his ‘pleasure’, by order in council and can be removed without notice or cause. He appoints or ‘green lights’ Party officials, both elected volunteers and paid. He chooses not just the Chief Public Servant and the members of the Privy Council’s office, but the members of the Prime Minister’s Office. He appoints all senior federal bureaucrats at the Deputy and Assistant Deputy levels and all ambassadors, consultants, boards and heads of all government agencies and Crown Corporations, the heads of RCMP, all intelligence agencies, the heads of the armed services, and senior assistants. He ‘green lights’ the Speaker of the Commons to run for Speaker, appoints the Speaker of the Senate, the Government leader of the Senate, ‘green lights’ Parliamentary officers and he appoints all Senators, all federal judges especially the Chief Justice and Supreme Court of Canada and Chief Justice of Courts of each province, Chairs of each Committee of House, and now, in part, the Senate. He ‘green lights’ all senior political staff of his own, all ministers and, in some cases, M.P.’s. He chooses his election campaign committee and pollsters. He chooses the party media team and party fundraisers. He chooses his House leadership, his whip, and their assistants to corral his members to vote. He can decide what out of country trips an M.P. takes on public business and to mete out rewards for foreign travel. He approves the national caucus chair, and if he chooses, ‘green lights’ each chair of the committees of the caucus and the appointment of chairs of each committee of the Commons who serve at his pleasure! Sometimes he decides the appointment of a Chair over his party members’ objections. He retains the right to kick members out of his caucus and invite others to join.20
The Cabinet
The first difficult task confronting a new Prime Minister is the selection of his Cabinet. The Cabinet under Parliamentary democracy is an essential linchpin to government. Ministers, in recent times, especially since John Diefenbaker, not only represent their regions but also reflect the diversity of the Canadian population. Justin Trudeau took the next major step appointing a Cabinet with gender parity.
Each Minister has extensive legislative duties and discretionary power. On his appointment, a thick book prepared by the PCO/PMO21 setting out his duties, range of activities, and an up-to-date review of all direct matters directly affecting his department people, is presented for his close study and consideration. Of late, each Minister receives a letter from the Prime Minister setting out his priorities. These have been made public.
The Prime Minister also appoints all Ministers and Chairs to various Cabinet Committees. By convention, all Cabinet deliberations are held in the strictest secrecy so that any decision appears to the public to be unanimous. That allows for full and open debate within Cabinet on any and all issues. Only when the archives of Cabinet deliberations are made public years later can we learn what went on.
The Prime Minster chairs the Cabinet and the Priorities and Planning Committee that deals with the day-to-day issues presented in Parliament.
By practice, one Minister is named the ‘political minister’ for his province and gains oversight and responsibility for all political activities within his region.
Still, the Prime Minister’s leadership reigns supreme. Any continued grumblings in Cabinet is usually a harbinger of Prime Minister loss of Cabinet confidence. It was the Cabinet loss of confidence and not the caucus that led to Diefenbaker’s fall from power.22
The Trappings of Office
Becoming a leader can be a powerful boost to any leader’s ego. The constant armed guards, the protective limousines, the ready availability of helicopters or jets to take the leader quickly to any destination, the constant saluting by guards and military can inflate anyone’s sense of self-importance. The Prime Minister’s daily calendar carefully husbanded by his senior office demonstrates the importance placed on every minute of his time on official work. Yet a mindful leader needs to insist that his schedule allow adjustment for careful reflection and downtime as events swirl around him.
Prime Ministers and Public Policy
Awesome in scope and reach, and yet rarely understood, the Prime Minister also determines the policies of his government, the timetable and agenda, the legislation, and regulations put before Parliament while in office. No one democratic leader in the world has this capacious range of powers. He chooses his spokespersons to the media. He decides where and when to travel and who should represent him abroad when he chooses not to travel. He sets foreign policy by his own travels. Long established historic buildings can be renamed on a gulp of public opinion or change its use. All Ministers’ policy speeches and their Parliamentary Assistants require his approval since he appoints them all. The national budget with last minute additions and subtractions require his prior consent. Until recently, he remained only accountable to the ‘confidence’ of his elected caucus. The Canadian Prime Minister cannot be fired as leader by the caucus alone. It now requires his Party in convention to do so. Still, he decides how to raise party funds and allocates how they are to be spent.23 The Canadian Prime Minister is more powerful than the British, Australian or New Zealand Prime Ministers under their respective Parliamentary practices and mandates.24 However, elected members in the caucus in each Parliamentary democracy can triggers a change in leadership.
Perhaps most important is the power to ‘make war’ and send Canadian forces abroad at the risk of their lives on forceful missions, peacekeeping, and peace-making engagements. This unlimited power in practice is the Prime Minister’s decision alone to make. Parliament usually follows his lead or silently acquiesces.
Polls As A Check on Prime Ministerial Power
Still, the public via the incessant political polls, can act as a quick if temporary ‘check and balance’ on the Prime Minister’s lead on issues large and small opposed by Opposition and abetted and amplified by the ever-present echo chamber of the ubiquitous social media, and with decreasing influence, the traditional press gallery power composed of press, TV and radio. The print media power now is diluted by the TV and radio scrums after question period, and the social media.
Canada’s Fragmented Political Power Structure
Canada owns a highly decentralized power structure divided between the federal and provincial powers. Of late, Prime Ministers have stealthily accumulated powers from the provinces. The Prime Minister must be able to gather the disparate strands into organized ideas and themes to maintain national unity on key issues, large and small, of national interest while paying at least lip service to endless provincial demands for a larger share of the national pie. There is validity to provincial claims that result in greater calls for a greater allocation of the taxpayers’ dollars. Regretfully, accountability continues to be blurred between levels of government, especially which level is accountable for which taxpayers’ dollars when tax measures are blended. The theory of responsible government is blurring. The greatest distortion lies between the needs of the cities compared to the provinces because of increasing growth of cities as the divide between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ continues to accelerate. This dysfunction continues to widen as cities grow even larger with inadequate financial resources to cope with their crushing needs. Citizens cannot easily allocate responsibility for the expenditure of tax payer’s dollars to the appropriate level of government to hold them accountable.
Prime Minister as a ‘Butcher’
A Prime Minister must be a good judge of character and capability, especially in his immediate circle, and of course, his Cabinet and his caucus (all of whom he must approve or reject for egregious conduct) and be an acute delegator via his key appointments. He must be prepared to make changes when their judgment falters, or his! Churchill offered that a Prime Minister must at times be a ‘butcher’ to chop Cabinet Ministers or other senior officials who disrupt his administration. When to do so, is a delicate choice a Prime Minister alone must make.
Of course, the Cabinet, the caucus, the opposition, the media, public opinion, and most of all polls all act as a check of the Prime Minister and his entourage, his inclinations and his reach for unlimited power and public support. The oversight by Parliament on the power of the public purse has been diluted as a check on the Prime Minister’s executive power by budget omnibus bills and complexity that time limits Parliament’s ability to debate each budget item, especially when larded beyond legislative reach by other bills that cannot go through public scrutiny because these bills are attached to one budget vote based on ‘confidence’. Parliament, as a check and balance, on executive action continues to weaken as the Prime Minister’s powers are enhanced. The practice of Prime Ministers appearing alone, almost as if they were the President of the U.S.A., weakens the concept of government by Cabinet in our Parliamentary system.
Leaders and Followers
Leadership is a collage of primary and secondary colours in the eye of the beholder – a palimpsest that covers over the deeper darker tones. Leadership, as perceived or desired by followers, takes the hue of colours that are visually attractive. A leader paints in bolder colours to justify what he is selling, while glossing over or muting the lesser darker colours and his deficits. Followers become instant apologists for their choice of leader. Their choice of leader can do no wrong. Their followers provide alibis for his or her and their gaffs to justify their followership. One draws from leaders what one seeks. A follower cannot help but nuance and alibi the undesirable aspects of their leader especially their patent mistakes and inadequacies. They are often in denial for their own sake or loath to admit their own judgment is flawed. They minimize the leader’s mistakes; they look for scapegoats. The political herd gathers around to protect their leader even when it is clear he may be leading his party over a precipice. Distractions are sought or in the most egregious cases, they may even ‘wag the dog’ to deflect public attention.25 Weak embattled leaders use ‘transference’ reflexively to blame others or to weather their own gaffs. The mind accepts only what it chooses and desecrates or demonizes the ‘other’. Loyalty can become toxic.
Leadership idolatry is an easy trap to fall into. The most difficult task for a loyal party follower is to dissent when the leader takes a wrong turn or two. Remember it was Abraham who destroyed his father’s factory making clay idols. Belief in a higher spirit should be one’s guide.26
Succession
Perhaps the fatal flaw in most leaders, who came to cherish the exercise of power and are naturally inflated when basking in the public spotlight, is when to give up the reins of power after ensuring a coterie of capable leaders are available and prepared for the country’s highest office with ample time to demonstrate their leadership qualities to the public. This flaw occurs so often that it may be endemic to most leaders.27
I came to observe, firsthand, Prime Ministers from 1961 to 2010 during almost half a century of political activism, as political militant, elected Party official, Ministerial Assistant, Senator, and by choice, robustly engaged with all of them in person or against the other Party leaders as an activist and Senator. Now as party ties are loosened and I approach the sunset of my life, I think I can now reflect more objectively on those exciting encounters with Canadian Prime Ministers of both major parties, especially the Liberal Party where I remain a ‘true’ if somewhat jaded ‘believer’ after I retired from public life as a Senator for twenty-six years at age 75. My years, near or in politics, were crammed with years of excitement and may hold some interest or even lessons for others who believe while public service is most demanding, it can also be most enriching and rewarding time to broaden one’s life experiences. There was a time when, as most politicians, I measured my life between elections.
A Leader’s ‘Charisma’
Modern behavioural psychologists, based on study and research models, cannot predict adequately or divine the effective amalgam of leadership qualities.28,29 Some leaders look great and fail, while other surprise us with their often-hidden talents. Sometimes leadership qualities emerge only in crisis. We are all captives of our own belief structure. The division between the mind and emotions, and senses and sensibility cannot be readily perceived, just estimated. What is clear is that leadership involves a strange alchemy. Some observers call it ‘charisma’.30 That chemical mix of elements that involves the eyes, sounds, pleasure, and pain points that generate admiration and followership – in a word – appeal. Some leaders are more appealing to the public than others. Yet, appeal is an essential ingredient of leadership. A casual exchange with a leader, of any stripe, shapes one’s attitude towards that leader. Is it our human nature that triggers a sense of awakened interest and respect, from even brief exchanges, that colour one’s attitude towards leadership immeasurably?
Leadership qualities are highly subjective. Our own attitudes are forged by our biases and belief structure. We each build a picture in our mind of the one we choose to follow. Negative biases can be overcome by a personal brush with a leader. We invest our hopes, our dreams, and beliefs into our chosen leader. Followers live in great expectations of our chosen leader. And so, it was.
Still, the public and the leader’s followers admire and respond to strength and the ‘smart’s when a leader’s instincts rise above the din of public opposition in the media and shape public opinion in a direction he chooses especially when he goes against conventional wisdom at the time.
Each Canadian Prime Minister, different in so many ways, shares common characteristics so alike that each forms a fascinating study of the human condition. Canada is not an easy nation to govern.31 We live in a surprising domestic political environment made even more complex by a divided governance swift moving global parts. An unexpected crisis anywhere colours the public view on how it impacts Canada.
The Prime Minister and His Caucus
One key to judging a leader is to observe him in the privacy of his weekly caucus meeting with his party team mates. I was invited to Mr. Pearson’s caucus on several occasions and was a member of the Federal Liberal caucus under Prime Ministers Trudeau, Turner, Chrétien and Martin, and interim Liberal Party leaders Herb Gray and Bill Graham, and then Dion and Ignatieff as Party leaders. I was a member of the caucus when Justin Trudeau joined as a newly minted Liberal Member of Parliament.
I avidly sought information from insiders of the Conservative Party to divine how Conservative leaders acted in their caucus. I was also keenly interested in how the leaders of the minority parties, especially the NDP, ran their caucus.
Usually the leader sums up the consensus and action plan for the week ahead after waiting for caucus leaders and caucus committee chairs to report and after each member is allocated a slot to speak on any issue local, national, or international of interest to him or her. Watching the leader’s eyes and body language after each short intervention is telling. Each speaker anticipates the leader will mention his point of view favourably in the leader’s final remarks. This is a tough audience, all up-to-date on the news and the recent polls. After the leader comments, I noted that critique of the leader’s performance was muted if the polls were favourable. If unfavourable, there would be a more restless reaction. Each leader listens intently to seek a good grade and hopefully a solid applause. It is the tribal leader and his tribe in real time. Some leaders become masters of this art form. As the caucus proceeded, I also wondered how I would respond. Pierre Trudeau was the most artful and convincing, always a master, developing a consensus from the disparate views and strands of argument that he heard. It was amazing to listen to his scintillating rendition on current events and weave together opposing caucus views. Pierre Trudeau was the master of painting a rich coherent tapestry of different strands of ideas after a free and open caucus debate which he relished.32 Trudeau’s powerful intellect shone through, giving his caucus members a fresh lens to consider the events of the day.
Followership
Followers are fickle, changeable, and easily replaceable. Tribalism is alive and well in politics. To be a member of a tribe, to follow a leader is natural and comforting as Canetti wrote in ‘Crowds and Power’.33 People behave in similar ways in a crowd. Humans, needing the comfort of companionship, cannot help but follow others, whether at a political rally, a funeral, in a theatre, or a wedding. We are ultimately inherent followers and it is hard to break loose from the ‘glue of the ‘crowd’ and separate ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’. We want to believe what we want to believe. It’s easy, comforting, fortifying, and affirming. It is our own sweet spot.
The public is anxious to overcome its skepticism of broken promises, even patent flaws, craving leadership to navigate and lead them through the turbulent often confusing waters we confront daily.
Organizing A Leader’s Public Event
To organize an event for a leader and then, like a master chef, enjoy the fruits of his labour with others, cannot be easily explained when one watches the leader perform before a crowd, especially a crowd that one helped organize. It’s a moment of high expectation and joy – ‘un frisson’ – if the leader and the crowd behave as planned, or dismay if the leader falters and the crowd will react. The leader is visibly empowered by the energy he extracts from an adoring crowd. He can appear, for a moment, larger than life itself. Every leader loves to bask in the warmth of public affection.
Leaders As Storytellers
Political historians of late, especially in the United States, have focused on a President’s storytelling ability to personalize an event by telling a story, this art form can divert public attention towards a course of action, rising above the noise and chatter of everyday news and gossip.
Lincoln, both Roosevelts and recently Obama exhibited this talent. No better storyteller in modern times to make a point was Ronald Reagan. John Diefenbaker had strong storytelling skills. Mike Pearson and Pierre Trudeau rarely used this innate talent. Brian Mulroney could also spin a yarn. Few were better than Jean Chrétien who could naturally tell a tale to make a point. Justin Trudeau in his early speeches as leader exhibited this talent.
Of course, humour is another invaluable tool in a leader’s repertoire to cool a situation and exhibit self-deprecation. A joke told by a leader on himself can be a most endearing characteristic of a leader. Pearson had the ability to poke fun at himself that kept his followers in thrall of this modest multi-talented leader and his understated abilities. So could Chrétien and Martin.
First Skill: Public Communication
Without the ability to communicate, whether in small circles, private gatherings or public events in the intensity of TV or radio, a leader cannot become a leader. All leaders must possess the skill. Some are better than others at persuading, debating, and teaching the public. But communication is a necessary art form for any leader.
Transformation
When a leader takes the mantle of Prime Minister, there is almost a visible, magical transformation to his personality. Assuming the trappings of office, like being crowned, a different persona emerges. Security guards salute and surround. Doors are opened. Followers like members of a tribe ascribe special attributes and a semi-infallibility to the new Prime Minister. For a time, so does the public.
The new leader himself seems imbued with positive endorphins and feels new surges of power emerging from within that brighten up his mien. Franklin Roosevelt quickly became the ‘Happy Warrior’ anxious to lead. And so, it is with most newly-minted leaders. The leader feels different because he has become different. Observers ascribe this to vibes a leader feels when he wins the political contest and becomes Prime Minister and naturally concludes there is something special about himself.
The Greek concept of the god Agonis comes into play. The conceit grows that one’s inherent gifts are only fully developed through contest. The motive of those who avoid contest makes the leader unconsciously distrustful of the motive of these others and their self-proclaimed altruism. Those who are defeated in a contest by the leader leaves the leader with mixed feelings. Respect for the competition, especially in a closely fought contest, along with self-satisfaction that he bested another in a national contest for public support.
A key factor in leadership is the leader’s ability to size up his opponents as they vie for the Prime Ministership. Like championship boxers, they spar in Parliament, on the hustings, and in TV debates,34 probing for strengths and weaknesses. Most Prime Ministers come to respect their opponents. Only two Prime Ministers held a visceral dislike for each other – Diefenbaker and Pearson, more so Pearson than Diefenbaker.
Leaders TV Debates
TV debates are now a fixture of election campaigns. Preparation is imperative. Speaking to their opponents and the public at the same time is an art form. Few win, many lose.
Party and Party Leadership
At the core of democracy lies the political party. Alternating parties and leaders in government give the electorate a choice and continuity in a functioning democracy. To win a free and open election is to legitimize and sanctify the democratic grant of power to a political party.
When one decides to join a political party, any individual can directly impact the nature of democratic process. One can participate in organizing, fundraising and policy development and especially the choice of leader who best represents the individual’s political principles imbedded in their belief structure. The leader in turn should know the Party’s constitution and be acquainted with the Party’s executive. Party platforms lay out the Party and the leader’s principles, choices, and preferences. Each leader who fails to maintain active Party leadership does so at his peril.
Loyalty to the party and leader is a way to influence the exercise of political power. Or so goes the thesis.
Party activists share this sense of involvement with other like-minded individuals. Party life, like government, is a team effort. A party activist broadens his life experience. Party adherence opens the door to a diverse network of relationships broader than family, friends, business, professional or work circles.
The history of parties from tribes, to court circles, to political factions, to caucuses, to organized parties is the history of democratic evolution with its own norms and rules of conduct. It is the heart beat of democracy.
Of necessity, the leader, as party leader is an essence of party leadership. A leader must be able to lead by example, inspire, and collaborate with his party adherents. He cannot act alone.
Some leaders are more mindful than others of this encompassing responsibility. Some party followers are likewise more responsible although less accountable in this duality. To neglect his party and its needs, a leader does so at his peril.
Fissures in this relationship can fragment and disable political power.
Alone
Ultimately, the leader alone carries the yoke of leadership. Leaders face issues of life and death; they decide to send men and women into harm’s way. Leaders face economic decisions that affect the lives and welfare of the many. When economic chaos occurs, the leaders must find the path to stronger ground. Leaders err and must seek to undo the damage of their egregious actions, the acts of commission or omission or those of their colleagues. Often times, the leader loses his confidence or the desire to make the incessant decisions he is pressed to make. Yet the leader must soldier on.
One decision, the loneliest decision of all, is when to leave public office. Some are pressed by the loss of an election, others by the loss of appetite for leadership. Some never know when to give way. The poets give guidance, “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul”, ‘Invictus’ by W.E. Henley, Nelson Mandela’s favourite aphorism.
Winston Churchill’s favourite poem, ‘Ulysses’ by Lord Tennyson which he would repeat verbatim:
“That which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
My favourite poem for leadership is Aeschylus:
“He who learns must suffer.
And even in our sleep
Pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despair, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God”
A belief structure gives a leader a moral compass and points him in the right direction when he falters, as he does and will.
Personal Encounters with Leaders
In all my personal encounters – not in the spotlight – each leader exuded a quiet, thoughtful, vulnerable, and peaceful exchange much different from their public persona.
Leadership and The Art of The Possible and The Pivot
Leadership is the art of the possible and, at times, the impossible. To go against conventional wisdom lies at the core of leadership when it’s the correct course for the nation. If leader intrudes when the nation faces a crisis, large or small, and the public is disturbed or worse, the leader can become a leader when he can change public opinion from apathy to support for strong action or capture the words to make a country feel secure. Some cautious leaders wait for the right moment to pivot public opinion if the public is of a different view. Recall Franklin Roosevelt who knew of the Japanese expansionist threat in the Pacific when he enacted fuel sanctions against Japan in the 1930’s well before Pearl Harbour seemed incapable, beset as he was by economic issues, and refused to invest political capital to arouse public opinion besotted with appeasement. Of course, Roosevelt’s hands were tied by the Neutrality Acts passed in the ‘30s. He waited for the attack on Pearl Harbour to capture and galvanize public support. This was not leadership, and America paid a heavy price. The true art of leadership is leading against public opinion and against conventional wisdom. Roosevelt pivoted, blaming others for the Pearl Harbour debacle and then pulled America together. The turnabout was a feat of leadership.
So it was in England under Chamberlain in the 1930’s, infected with appeasement, refused to accept the Nazi threat, scarred as he was from his World War I experiences, and was forced to reluctantly give up power, despite the continuous support of his caucus, to the disliked and distrusted Churchill. Few knew that Chamberlain suffered from cancer at the time, and he felt he could not continue to lead after the outset of World War II. Reluctantly, he turned the reins of leadership over to Churchill after war was declared (though much preferring the appeasing Lord Halifax) as Churchill’s early recognition of the Nazi threat was now appreciated by the public though less so by his own party or its party leadership at the time which never fully gained Conservative Party support still infected with appeasement and the hope for peace at all costs. Churchill was mistrusted by his party and needed a united government of all parties, Conservative, Labour, and Liberal, to achieve his war aims.35
Bill Clinton, after his first term when both the Senate and the House fell into Republican hands pivoted to the centre to achieve many legislative goals.
Personal, Private Challenges
Each Prime Minister overcame personal challenges in their lives. Some are known, others are private. John Diefenbaker was invalided during military services in World War I. Little is known of this incident. Diefenbaker’s first wife was troubled and hospitalized. Lester B. Pearson suffered a severe breakdown during his service in World War I. Pierre Trudeau suffered the loss of his father in his mid-teens and separation from his wife while in office. John Turner, born in England, lost his father as an infant. Brian Mulroney verged on becoming an alcoholic and endured periodic bouts of crippling depression. Kim Campbell came from a broken family. Jean Chrétien, the youngest sibling in a family of seventeen, a challenge in itself, suffered from a facial disfigurement and a hearing impairment in one ear and later from the travails of his adopted son while in office. Paul Martin contracted polio as a youth and overcame an early speech impediment. Justin Trudeau suffered the public breakup of his parent’s marriage, the loss of his youngest brother, and the loss of his father. Each traumatic event transformed them. Each overcame.
The Chronological Order of The Book
This book is done in chronological order as I encountered, close up and personal, the last eleven Prime Ministers and contains my own idiosyncratic views. At the end of each chapter, I have appended the maiden speech, their first speech in Parliament, after each was first elected to Parliament to judge them by their own early words.
Hopefully some may gain a deeper insight from what I considered fascinating encounters. Any brush with power takes on a lustre of its own. Hereafter are only my own views which I share in the hope that others may find it a useful foray into Canadian politics that animate and excite me, still. I hope I have shed most of my narrow partisanship and render honest opinions.
Reflections on Prime Ministers
Diefenbaker led when he persuaded the Commonwealth to kick apartheid South Africa out of its membership despite fierce opposition in his Party, from U.K., and Canadian business elites.
Diefenbaker’s vision of Canada’s North changed the Canadian narrative from sea to sea to sea. Diefenbaker preached ‘One Canada’ and unhyphenated Canadians to the end of his career.
The Diefenbaker ‘wheat deal’ with China and Trudeau’s engagement with Cuba are examples of ‘engagement diplomacy’ that never changed ‘human rights’ in those autocratic countries as promised.
Mr. Pearson demonstrated leadership qualities in his climb up the bureaucratic pole and then on the international stage in constructing post World War II international organizations like the UN and NATO as a diplomat and especially after the Suez crises as a Minister of External Affairs despite misgivings of some in St. Laurent’s Cabinet and the fierce opposition from British colleagues by formulating a separation of military forces and then establishing a UN peacekeeping force with Canada leading to fill the void. Even his own government seemed hesitant and reluctant as the opposition led by Mr. Diefenbaker hammered him for his disloyal thrusts against Mother Britain.
Pearson, as Prime Minister, accomplished more lasting progressive legislative achievements during his short tenure as the Prime Minister than any other Prime Minister and all, without the luxury of a majority government. The introduction of Medicare and the Canadian flag, the national anthem ‘O Canada’, policies towards bilingualism and multiculturalism, legislation on limiting election expenses, and the modernization of divorce laws, despite fierce opposition and divisions within his own party are a tribute to his muted style of leadership and were each, in their own way, transformative.
Toujour Quebec has been a recurrent theme in Canada even before Confederation, since Carter’s first settlement on the St. Laurence River. Quebec, a source of political power, was always seeking more. Pearson moved to set up the Committee on Bilingualism and Biculturalism and refreshed his caucus from Quebec with new blood. Under Trudeau, Canada faced a number of challenges like the separatist crises, political assassination of a Quebec Minister, and the kidnapping of a British diplomat in Quebec. Trudeau did not wait, he acted strongly, arguably too strongly for many at the time. Trudeau then went on to incorporate bilingualism in the public service and expand the concept of a bilingual national capital by adding Hull to the Ottawa Capital precinct. He adopted multiculturalism to reflect the changing demographics of Canada. Trudeau even adopted the metric system to modernize our internal calculation systems despite domestic opposition. The public service was opened to younger players with diverse ethnic origins. Abolition of capital punishment passed into law despite staunch public and parliamentary opposition. Canada’s coastal boundaries expanded the ocean limits to 200 miles by Trudeau that saved the fishery on both coasts from extinction and gained a new extended boundary on Canada’s capacious northern frontier.
Above all, Pierre Trudeau led in the repatriation of the Constitution from the U.K. and the establishment of Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Canadian public was largely disinterested. The opposition was stiff at both the federal and provincial spheres. This singular act of leadership transformed the Canadian narrative and the discourse within Canada’s civic society forever.
Trudeau refused to rewrite history when pressured to do so believing as he did that a nation should not revise the past but improve the future.36
As Minister of Justice, John Turner was the most progressive and innovative in Canadian history. It was Turner that Trudeau enlisted to implement the bare planks of his ‘Just Society’ and bilingual policies in Parliament. Turner led in Parliament on the abolishment of capital punishment. As Minister of Finance, he moved sharply to address deficits and the debt when the public, and the public served, were disinterested in the consequences. He introduced easy tax appeals as the tax system must be seen to fair and just. John Turner as Prime Minister continued as the supreme advocate of Parliament – the ‘vox populae’. Almost alone, he fought the FTA believing that the detail in this free trade agreement weakened Canadian sovereignty. It was Turner who insisted on a provision in the FTA for dispute resolutions independent of U.S.A. courts. History has yet to complete this chapter on Canadian economic policy. No one was a firmer supporter of the centrality of Parliament in the lives of Canadians, nor held its arcane rules and traditions in greater regard.
Joe Clark was a fair, hard-hitting, and diligent leader of the Opposition while his short tenure as Prime Minister did not allow him ample time to implement his ‘progressive’ conservative ideas at home or abroad.
Brian Mulroney led on the FTA when Canada didn’t even enjoy free trade across its provincial borders – and still doesn’t! Turner opposed the FTA pointing out its defects knowing he would lose support from the business establishment. Their leadership was transformative in different ways.
Mulroney led on the Consumer Tax which was bitterly opposed as was the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.A. Both were enacted under maelstroms of opposition and dissident public opinion. The consumer tax placed Canada’s finances on a broader equitable tax platform at both the federal and provincial levels. The FTA opened the constrained protectionist channels towards faster and more cost-effective economic growth.
Mulroney took up the gauntlet left by Diefenbaker and pressured the Boer South African government to free Mandela which brought a relatively peaceful end to apartheid.
Kim Campbell became the first female Prime Minister after achieving a series of female firsts from Minister of Veteran Affairs to Minister of Justice and Attorney General to Minister of Defence. She failed to serve as Prime Minister in Parliament and so never had an opportunity to transform the government as she planned.
Jean Chrétien led the opposition at home and abroad to the Iraq war and his innovative Clarity Bill muffled and stifled separationist activism. After 9/11, recognizing the danger of U.S.A. closing Canadian borders, he swiftly introduced a tough terrorist bill, tougher than the Americans at the time that eased American concerns about infiltration of terrorists across our border. Chrétien increased female participation in politics, appointing the first female deputy Prime Minister and increased the number of female senior public servants. Together with his Minister of Finance and avid rival Paul Martin Jr., he transformed the debt and deficit ridden federal government and the national economic narrative to balanced budgets that placed Canada on a sound economic platform for growth. He refused to allow Canadian banks to merge despite strong lobbying by the powerful banking community easing the bank disruption unlike the United States. Then Chrétien directed innovative investments in science, higher education, student loans, and making higher education a national priority. At all times, he was a superb shrewd, even crafty, frugal administrator of the burgeoning federal government.
Paul Martin Jr. as Minister of Finance successfully arrested the runaway burgeoning national debt and the endless deficits and balanced the budget without rupturing the ‘social set’ – a remarkable economic legacy. No Minister of Finance was as diligent and astute in collecting all the national accounts in one place for the first time and then setting stiff rules to keep injudicious runaway spending under principled restraint. His appointment of a public judicial inquiry into the Liberal Party’s Quebec-based ‘sponsorship’ scandal was both brave and feckless. As Prime Minister, he initiated an expansive program of reforms on greater financial support to cities, education, and Aboriginal affairs that were clearly articulated but curtailed by his short tenure as Prime Minister. He opened the door to more private members bills in Parliament to widen the scope of federal governance beyond the Cabinet.
Harper, a politician of conviction, led by actively advocating human rights in Russia and China while the Canadian public was largely disinterested and preferred to exchange trade and jobs and sideline ‘human rights’ public advocacy in these foreign lands. His political opponents and predecessors, with some exceptions like John Diefenbaker, cherished ‘engagement’ with autocrats over harsh and open advocacy of human rights. However, Harper preferred open engagement with autocrats, though he realized that this public advocacy would not, in the short run, dilute their egregious conduct. He sought to reform the flawed relationship between Aboriginals and the Federal government. His immigration legislation clarified and modernized, muddled, episodic porous immigration policies while expediently avoiding future problems. Harper sustained a strong balanced budget approach to public finances leaving a solid legacy of fiscal integrity.
Justin Trudeau’s sunny ways united the Liberal Party divided by tribalism and then the nation and introduced sweeping gender parity recognition in his entourage, the Cabinet, the Senate, and public service. His abrupt reforms on the Senate (separating the National Caucus from Liberal senators participation and the appointment of only ‘independent’ senators with no Liberal ties) removed the Senate as a recurring thorn in the side of public dialogue enhancing its legitimacy while diminishing the validity of its natural political structures, for now. Party groupings are inevitable in the Senate as in any other political democratic body. The legalization of cannabis is a singular act of leadership, yet too early to determine its impact on civic society. Trudeau advanced feminine parity in party structures, in the elected membership, in the Commons, and the Senate. Climate change policies continue to evolve but his leadership to raise public awareness at home and abroad is undisputed. His ‘celebrity’ has reached further and wider abroad than any Prime Minister before him, giving Canada a modern up-to-date gloss and an international platform to expand his views and the national interests of Canada. How this will play remains too early to predict. As problems emerge, especially on the trade front and in governance, it is too early to measure his qualities and effectiveness as a leader. Relations with major powers like Russia and China are chilly, yet evolving, and too early to judge outcomes. Increased military spending and reorganization of military research works in 2017 is a step forward, yet too early to assess, as is the large commitment to renew aging infrastructures. Reaching a ‘free trade agreement’ with a revised mandate with the United States and Mexico over provocations was a triumph of patience especially when dealing with the American President. Recent promises to reduce poverty are welcome. Trudeau’s goal of inspiring Canadians to become leaders in artificial intelligence is laudatory. Steps towards Aboriginal justice continue. No one can question his dedication, energy, and focus to sell his policies at home or abroad.
Leadership is viewed through the prism of coloured lens and cannot be viewed otherwise. Most times, leaders build on the successes of their predecessors while maligning their record. Leadership is highly subjective, and power can only be viewed with suspicion by students of politics or historians, through one’s subjective mind’s eye. It is always thus!
Leadership and Legacy
Carlyle, the noted ‘liberal’ English historian wrote about the ‘Great Man’ theory of history: “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”37
Leadership requires a toxic cocktail of infinite egoism, invincible self-confidence and excessive competitiveness, an unshakeable belief structure, love of bathing in public acclaim while being immune from personal idolatry, and an interior vision that history can be altered by their actions better than others.
Politicians have a fetish for reshaping their contributions to history. They can’t resist embellishing their own accomplishments, flawed or otherwise. Presidents in the U.S.A. are addicted to bending history to suit their version of their contributions to history. It is done in three major ways – their Libraries, their autobiographies, and books by their fervent acolytes. First and foremost is the creation of a Presidential Library where all the President’s artifacts, papers, and history are archived to polish their legacy. Each Presidential Library is designed to tailor the President’s version of his legacy within a permanent institution. The first Presidential Library was situated in the country home of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, NY and to archive his personal papers.
American Presidents’ Obsession with Enhancing Their Legacies
Intrigued by their quirks, I have visited many of the Presidential Libraries. My two favourites are the Libraries of Harry Truman and George W. Bush. Modest enough to call them Libraries. Each Library contains an exact replica of the Oval Office. Truman’s Library is a simple one-story brick building designed in a square. In the centre of Truman’s quadrangle building in Independence, Missouri, is his final resting place marked by a simple granite tombstone marked Truman befitting his simplicity and modesty. George W. Bush’s Library is likewise an unpretentious three-story brick building on a raised knoll in a corner on the campus of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Library is a monumental modern glass-walled structure located in Boston with wonderful views dedicated to magnifying his stunted legacy during his short tenure that was so full of mishaps early on and ended in a tragic assassination.
Ronald Reagan’s Library in California is larger than an air terminal hangar housing his Oval Office and also a replica of Air Force One, the outsized Presidential jet that was outfitted to match his Hollywood taste. Perhaps his ranch in the foothills of California was more suited to his outdoor image of himself.
Bill Clinton’s Library has an outsize modernistic building in the smallish capitol of Little Rock, Arkansas where he once served as Governor after being defeated the first time, imitating his outsized sense of self-esteem while diluting his tarnished record of impeachment and debarment from law. Clinton remains, despite his known flaws, a most popular President notable for his communication skills, his legislative expertize, his political insights, and reading political trends.
These Libraries each present a concrete benchmark to demonstrate their own ‘virtual reality’ of each President’s role in history.
No recent President was so overt in pursuit of his own vacillating wandering legacy as Barack Obama while in office and after. To elect his Republican successor would be ‘treason’ to his legacy, he viscerally proclaimed on the campaign trail as his successor, perhaps not his preferred choice, and former adversary was defeated. We are told his Presidential Library will cover well over a hundred thousand square feet of building space near the pristine waterfront of Chicago and owned in part by his own foundation, a first in post presidential self-aggrandizing actions.
Of course, each President feels compelled to write his own version of history via an autobiography. In the case of Kennedy,38 due to his premature death, his ‘autobiography’ was left to his gifted speech writer, Ted Sorenson, and his literary advisor, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who each wrote paeans of praise to JFK’s limited accomplishments while diluting his early major errors. A romantic version that hankered for chivalrous Camelot was carefully crafted by his wife.
We can read history through the filter of each President’s mind by examining their memoirs. Truman, like the man, was straightforward and modest. Nixon was different. After leaving public office in disgrace, he wrote a series of well-written books on government leaders, politics, and foreign policies to reinstate his place in history. Later on, his autobiography rationalized his defects while paying tribute to his undoubted accomplishments coloured by his quick resignation from his high office to avoid impeachment. Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush followed suit. All wrote autobiographies that reflected their biases and apologia for their patent errors while embellishing their considerable accomplishments. So did their wives. Obama wrote books of his early life as paeans of praise to himself and wonderment to his interesting, if skewed, early years. He even penned a children’s book while in office. Really. The public anxiously awaits the publication of the memoirs of Obama who received a million in advance to tell his stories of his time in public office. His wife’s autobiography entitled Becoming is a masterpiece of history of a black woman growing up in middle-America and reaching the ring as America’s First Lady.
Maiden Speeches
A maiden speech is a new Member’s first speech in Parliament; by custom, this first speech is not interrupted. The Member’s maiden speech gives Parliament its first taste of the Member’s interests and aptitudes. Usually a new Member waits for a period before he makes his maiden speech to acclimatize himself to the House. Usually a new Member does not intervene to ask questions until after his maiden speech. This was not always the case with respect to future Prime Ministers, especially John Diefenbaker and Pierre Trudeau who both asked prolific questions and intervened in other Member’s speeches. It was appropriate for Pierre Trudeau as he was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister ‘Mike’ Pearson immediately after his election to Parliament and he was required to answer questions in the Prime Minister’s absence; but Pierre Trudeau went further. He immediately challenged opposition members especially from Quebec on their views of the British North America Act and their views of Quebec within Canada.
Leaders and Autobiographies
Each British Prime Minister, from Gladstone to Lloyd George, from Anthony Eden to Harold McMillan, from Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher, from John Major to Tony Blair, wrote their own outsized autobiographies and incorporated their version of their contributions to history.
Churchill was different. Churchill was, by profession, a journalist and a writer. His majestic accounts of the Boer War, World War I, and magnificent volumes on World War II garnered him the Nobel Prize all contained subtle and no so subtle self-praise to demonstrate his depth of intellect and undoubtable achievements. Churchill wrote an early autobiography before he became Prime Minister called My Early Life that laid bare his version of his early aptitudes and lack thereof as well as his early love of politics. He wrote a definitive massive biography of his early ancestor Marlborough, the first notable Churchill, to enhance his roots. A stunning biography of Lord Primrose, a short-lived Prime Minister and Liberal icon stands out in its concise swift dramatic strokes. Churchill’s majestic A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is studded with colourful vignettes of English political leaders. His work on his paternal beacon, Lord Randolph Churchill, is both poignant and elucidating as Churchill sought to embellish his father’s short-lived and somewhat tragic political career. After World War II, he wrote a multi volume saga as war time Prime Minister, each volume is a classic that stands the test of time. After retirement, he engaged his son, Randolph, also a talented writer but flawed politician, to write his father’s authorized biography only to be taken over by Sir Martin Gilbert who was granted access to Churchill’s voluminous papers. Churchill’s life is a gift that keeps giving. Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to rewrite it.”
Canadian Prime Ministers followed Canadian expectations of historical revisionism seen through their eyes from early life to Prime Ministership.
Politicians of all stripes simply cannot resist a fetish to publish their autobiographies. Two of the most commendable are the two volumes by Paul Martin Sr., Paul Martin’s father, which are both well-written and insightful.39 Another is the multi-volume autobiography in French, now out of print, of Jean-Louis Gagnon, an activist Liberal and ‘liberal’ who bravely fought the reactionary Duplessis Regime in Quebec during the ‘30s, but regrettably has yet to be translated into English. In his later years, I became well acquainted with Jean-Louis Gagnon when he was appointed by Pierre Trudeau as a Commissioner to the Canadian Radio and Television Commission regulating broadcasting in Canada. Jean-Louis regaled me with tales of how Quebec leaders, including federal politicians, and the Church hierarchy appeased Duplessis’s autocratic policies, especially his own Liberal Party.
John Diefenbaker waited until Mr. Pearson’s third and final memoir was published after his death, when he published his own third and final volume entitled One Canada – The Turbulent Years notable for his full-throated attack of Liberal policy shifts, most especially when Mr. Pearson switched his policy to allow Bomarc nukes to be based in Canada. A detailed defense of scrapping the Avro CF-110 fighters is rendered. Mr. Diefenbaker’s rationale on the Coyne Affair when he removed him as Chair of the Bank of Canada remains of interest. In each case, Diefenbaker described how the Liberals shifted their positions on each major issue. A fascinating apologia. He details how he felt the Americans meddled in his national election campaigns in 1962 and 1963 which they did. Americans had, and still have, a fetish to meddling in other nation’s elections, democratic and otherwise.40 I cannot recall an important foreign election since the 1960’s when the United States did not meddle to some degree to gain a foreign political result aligned to their hegemonic policies, especially all former Communist led European autocratic governments as they evolved into nascent democracies, and of course throughout Central and South America.
Lester B. Pearson wrote superb essays and published collections of his graceful speeches, Four Faces of Pearson in 1964 when Prime Minister, Nuclear Diplomacy in the Modern World was published earlier when he was leader of the Opposition in 1959 and finally his biography published in three volumes entitled Mike, all with a view to shape history with his insights and the impressions he alone made on international and domestic politics, which were noteworthy and considerable. The third volume of Mike was published after Mr. Pearson’s death on his period as Prime Minister, based on his dairies, memos and research, and was a spirited record of his tenure as Prime Minister – gracious, honest, and understated as was the man himself.41
Joe Clark wrote a straightforward account of his political rise and record, modest, factual and understated without artificial drama.42 He outlines his regrets and his ambitious goals.
Pierre Trudeau collated his essays and speeches that is required reading for any Liberal. Finally, he published his memoirs which lack the verbal bite of his early polemics.43 He shades over his youthful extremist views. Perhaps the greatest intellectual to be Canadian Prime Minister, his views are still hotly contested by critics on the left and right. The cover on Trudeau’s memoirs illustrates his love of nature and the image he chose to project, dressed as he is in an Aboriginal deerskin jacket and paddling a canoe. Trudeau had a penchant for the dramatic. His portrait in Parliament displays him theatrically wrapped in a cape depicted Trudeau as he wanted to be depicted – with romantic flair.
Each Prime Minister chooses the artist to render his portrait to be exhibited in the Halls of Parliament. Each portrait tells a story in itself. Statues of Prime Ministers dot the grounds of Parliament Hall and tell a different story. My favourite is the noble statue of Sir Wilfred Laurier.
Turner’s slender book is a collection of his speeches published before becoming Prime Minister and remains reluctant after office to write his memoirs.44
Brian Mulroney in his own hand wrote his massive autobiography Brian Mulroney Memoirs45 notably reducing the smudges to his political record. Fair game, as he defended his solid public record with wit, insight, and relentless charm.
Kim Campbell wrote Time and Chance46 that belies her frothiness and inexperience. She dove into the detail of each ministerial post prior to her successful leadership run and finally her elevation as Prime Minister. Her depth, commitment, energy, and probity were unquestioned. Perhaps her acknowledged naiveté, shallow judgement, and failure to focus on priorities and her divided entourage and divided national campaign crew was her undoing.
Jean Chrétien co-wrote a best-seller in 1985 called Straight from the Heart, written as he wished to be judged by history.47 Later in 2007, Chrétien published a full account My Years as Prime Minister (Vintage Canada, 2008), an excellent primer on how to manage the Cabinet and bureaucracy effectively. It is a clearly written record of his formidable public service and superb administrative skills. In 2018, Chrétien published a meandering account of reminisces – warm, endearing, insightful and so Chrétien.48
Paul Martin Jr. wrote his version of his political contributions Hell Or High Water: My Life In And Out of Politics49 in the straight forward manner that belies his leadership; free of froth and focused on his factual record – straightforward, self-depreciating, likeable, witty, and approachable, like the man himself. He displays his wide range of interests, perhaps too broad, and lacking priority, much like his tenure. Most important, he honestly set out in great detail his achievements as Minister of Finance rarely so accurately written not omitting failures, always giving credit to his associates. Of interest is his tumultuous relationship and rivalry with Jean Chrétien, giving Chrétien credit for his political judgement when they disagreed, honest and concise, and accepting of criticism which he considered fair and balanced – a feverish inside look at intra-party political rivalry at its hottest.
Stephen Harper, after leaving public life, published a concise exegesis of a modern conservative setting out the rationale for his convictions.50
Justin Trudeau published his early memoirs of his youthful life and early political career during his first election campaign for Prime Minister.51 A book always adds gravitas to a budding politician while revealing the contours of his character and lessons learned from youthful experiences and early political life.
All these words written by Prime Ministers should be required reading for any wannabee politician or activist.
May I repeat as Churchill is reputed to have said, “I will be well treated by history because I intend to write it.” So it is.
The leader’s fervent acolytes, especially members of the leader’s inner circle, cannot resist writing about the attributes and actions of their leader and in the process, embellish their own minor roles in the leader’s desired legacies enhancing their own contribution to that legacy, faux or otherwise.
Prime Ministers and Families
One chapter in the lives of each Prime Minister that needs further exposition is the leader’s family circle and the impact on each leader’s political ambitions and actions. Distinct patterns emerge from a review of these Prime Ministers early lives and careers, their potent family influences and close friends on their lives and political careers and above all, their innate competitive spirit remains a vibrant chapter yet to be written. ‘No man is an island’ as the leader is swept by the waves of impact from father, mother, siblings and especially wives that have played such a keen part throughout their public careers.
Prime Ministers and Their Sense of History52
While all Prime Ministers were intensely interested in their legacies, few have a rounded sense of Canadian domestic and foreign history or parliamentary history and a Prime Minister’s role in the tangled web of the undulating currents of history as it unfolded rooted is it in the past.
Winston Churchill was a lifelong student of history, who excelled in history from his days at Harrow while he struggled with other subjects. There he was first inculcated in the annals of British history from the days of the Anglo Saxons till the British imperialism which he and his teachers saw as the procreation of rights and freedoms. His memory of history, especially British history was unique, both sweeping and technical in detail. His majestic volumes on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples attest to the depth of his comprehension of the factors and personalities that flow grinded out the annals of Britain step-by-step advance in civilization.53 Churchill believed that British history marked the progress of western civilization and the rule of law.
Ronald Reagan, considered by most observers to have limited intellectual depth or historic understanding, had a surprising sense of history and held deep political principles which he deployed (see Ronald Reagan: An Intellectual Biography by David T. Bryne (Potomac Books, 2018) for a revisionist examination of Reagan’s intellectual roots. Reagan believed in the ideology of freedom based on his Christian beliefs. No modern President wrote more about his ideas than Reagan. Reagan wrote his own scripts for his early radio shows.
Diefenbaker was an early student of history. His father, a small-town teacher, ignited his interest in political history especially Laurier.54 He was a fervent supporter of the Crown and was knowledgeable about the history of the evolution of British law from the days of Magna Carta and the ways and means of Parliament. As a criminal lawyer, he sharpened his knowledge of the criminal law as his studies and legal practice led him to introduce the Charter of Rights in Parliament codifying in large part the rights and freedoms under British common law. He maintained an insatiable taste for political biographies but little beyond that is known.55
As a history student at Oxford and then a history professor at the University of Toronto, Pearson maintained an avid interest, reading books on history and diplomacy throughout his career. As the son of a pastor, he had an acquired familiarity with the Bible and the Church social gospel. As a public servant and diplomat in foreign service, he acquired intimate knowledge of European history.
Prime Ministers born and educated in Quebec like Pierre Trudeau, Mulroney, Chrétien, and Justin Trudeau by French Canadian priests were all indoctrinated with French Canadian nationalist ideas of the possibility of the reconquest of North America led by French speakers56 just as Churchill believed in the influence of the English speaking people in the U.K. and the U.S.A. The voyageur spirit of travel and discovery was equally burned into their inner thoughts and political ideology. They all had a sense of exceptionalism about the French idea in America. Mulroney, though born an Irish Catholic, shared this schooled indoctrination. This early education coloured their world view in many aspects. Pierre Trudeau could repeat large gulps of French poetry and was familiar with Latin poetry and Greek mythology.
While Turner was well schooled in British history at Oxford and owned a voracious memory, he did not retain a passionate interest after he left university. However, he was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in London and was deeply influenced by the history and precedents of English law and the evolution of English rights. This influence manifested itself after he became Minister of Justice. This study of central place in Parliament in British society never left him.
Joe Clark was and remains an avid student of history, the biographies of great political figures and the evolution of multilateral organizations.
Brian Mulroney never claimed nor held profound views of history. Yet, having been born and schooled in Quebec, he was fascinated by the history of Quebec, the travels of the couriers du bois across America, and the relationship of Quebec with Confederation.
Jean Chrétien viewed history through the eyes of a ‘rouge’ from Quebec. His father’s work sojourn for almost a decade in the United States broadened his outlook as did the experience of his and his wife’s relatives when they settled in western Canada and lost their French language skills.
Kim Campbell was not particularly obsessed with the study of history though she was an excellent student of politics and economics, read political biographies and feminist literature and the role of the women’s movements as it affected history.
Stephen Harper was a self-proclaimed student concentrating on economic theory and economic history rather than political history. Yet, he studied political history and political party history to assist him as he built the modern Conservative Party.
Justin Trudeau’s interests were not by design intellectual nor is he interested in history which he shares with most millennials. Trudeau had and maintains an abiding interest in literature.
Still the study of history remains vital as a vital navigator to plot future progress and to avoid pitfalls and missteps along the way for any Prime Minister. To know history is to avoid its pitfalls.57
Measuring A Prime Minister
In the end, each Prime Minister is judged by both his own singular acts of leadership, some obvious, others less transparent, and the legislative and institutional footprints left by his administration. Did the nation fare better or worse under each stewardship? This remains a comparative question for historians.
One simple test remains for a liberal and a ‘progressive’. Did illiteracy and poverty rise or fall during the Prime Minister’s tenure?
A foremost American scholar of Presidential leadership qualities, the late Fred I. Greenstein, taught at Princeton University. Greenstein’s deployed behavioural science to dissect Presidential leadership, an elusive art form, at best. Greenstein’s analytic Presidential index may have relevance to the exercise of Prime Ministerial leadership. He noted six criteria to measure presidential leadership performance:
•Effective public communication
•Organizational capacity
•Political skill
•Vision
•Cognitive style
•Emotional intelligence
“In the real world, human imperfection is inevitable but some imperfections are most disabling than others…” “Above all”, Greenstein emphasized “thought and emotion”. “Beware”, he concluded, “the presidential contender who lacks emotional intelligence. In the absence of all else, one may turn to ashes.”58
I leave it to the reader to determine the applicability of the complex application of behavioural science to Canadian Prime Ministerial leadership.
Measuring A Prime Minister’s Record
The Prime Minister of Canada, the leader of leaders in Canada, can be measured by his government’s record on four fronts – national unity, the sauce that keeps Canada together, the domestic record of economic growth and home economics, and the economic well-being of the family. Moving towards equality in the treatment of individuals and groups with a measured record of improving literacy and decreasing poverty lies at the core of a leader who wishes to be defined by his ‘progressive’ policies and as a liberal. Lifting the Aboriginal community to economic independence is also a long sought-after benchmark. The renovation of the justice system for Aboriginals regretfully continues to move at a snail’s pace. Finally, our external relationships beyond our borders especially with our adjacent neighbour, the United States of America and members of the Commonwealth and of course advances in multilateralism remains a linchpin of Canada’s foreign policy.
Let me dwell on the last, our external affairs with other nations. Until the Justin Trudeau administration, the Department responsible for external affairs was called precisely that, the Department of External Affairs. Now it has been rebranded as the Department of Global Affairs. I must say as my work and research59 of foreign affairs was lengthy, I prefer the older description.
Prime Ministers and External Affairs
Each Prime Minister has always given external affairs his personal attention especially relationships with foreign leaders and their policies. Each Prime Minister craves to leave his imprints on world politics.
Louis St. Laurent was Minister of External Affairs before assuming the office of Prime Minister as was Lester B. Pearson.60 Pearson had only admirers from foreign leaders of all shapes. Diefenbaker loved the direct exchanges with foreign leaders. While Diefenbaker was at odds with President Kennedy, he was highly regarded by De Gaulle in France. Pierre Trudeau was a world traveller before becoming Prime Minister and considered himself knowledgeable about most aspects of foreign affairs, especially France, China, the Middle East, and Africa. His final tour to Eastern Europe was a last gasp peace mission to reduce nuclear arms and foster co-existence – lofty in aim which left little tracks. All Prime Ministers love to travel abroad and relish their goodbye tours before leaving office. Some are more skilled than others. Joe Clark’s early disastrous trip abroad when luggage was lost dented his reputation as leader. Turner was comfortable travelling abroad especially in Britain and France where he had longstanding educational and political relationships. Mulroney relished foreign travel as did Kim Campbell. As for Paul Martin, he loved foreign travel, especially Africa. Stephen Harper prepared meticulously for each foreign trip and enjoyed the challenge of exchanges on issues rested in his convictions on human rights especially with China and Russia that ran against both the grain of both nations. Previous leaders like ‘Mike’ Pearson, imbued with the theory of diplomatic engagement even with autocrats. Justin Trudeau was the most confident from the very outset of his leadership when he travelled abroad. Each purchased a different outlook and legacy in external affairs yet to be fully explored and compared.
Justin Trudeau entered the world scene with poise attracting early attention and approval. His travels abroad especially India with his family shredded his judgement as a leader both within India and Canada. He was the first Canadian Prime Minister to address the French Parliament – a notable achievement where he was well received. The contours of the most important relationship with the unpredictable United States President remains a work in progress for Justin Trudeau. Trudeau will fare better as the American President gains broader experience and understands the historic relationship between Canada and the United States.
Leadership, Social Media and The ‘New Politics’
When I first began my activist career in the Liberal Party in the early 1960’s, the rage was the ‘New Politics’, the theory that politics could only be reformed by committed volunteers at the grassroots. Today the ‘New Politics’ via the social media allows every volunteer to participate in the direction of politics easily and cost effectively. Each volunteer can be a leader.
Tweeting
In this era of the two-hour news cycle and the speed of government decisions expected by the public, tweeting has become a powerful tool for the Prime Minister to show instant leadership in his actions and reactions to fast breaking public events. The Prime Minister leads in his tweets while his administration races to keep up. Yet, only the Prime Minister elected to lead should tweet and he alone bears the accountability and consequences of his Cabinet and leadership.
The Defense of Canada – Failure of Leadership
Starting with John Diefenbaker in early 1960’s when he scrapped the prototypes and plans to build the most advanced interception fighter plane in the world, the Avro Arrow CF 105 to match the Soviet build long range bomber fleet, each successive Prime Minister since has failed to maintain an adequate defense force on land, sea or air to meet the changing strategic needs and NATO defense commitments of Canada commensurate with the nation’s wealth and GDP.
At the end of World War II, Canada had the largest merchant marine fleet in the world61 and one of the best trained military and air forces. During World War II, Canada was a training centre for allied pilots, especially pilots whose countries were members of the Commonwealth. Canada had the largest per capita pilot training program amongst all the allies. These national assets were not converted to the private sector.
Canada’s love of the air started with the two national airlines in the ‘30s – TransCanada (later Air Canada62) and Canadian Pacific. Early in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Canada’s pilots were the leading ‘bush’ pilots in the world as travel and transport to the northern frontier was expanded.
Since Diefenbaker, Canada has failed to keep the ‘True North – Strong and Free’.63
Our commitments to NATO have not been met since the 1950’s. Each year, our budget for defense has been assiduously cut and depleted. This changed in 2017 when the Justin Trudeau government introduced a sweeping review of Canada’s defense forces and its budget promising to increase the budget by 70% from 2017 to 2025, still lagging in per capita growth. The defense budget and the current related research organization in government hands has not kept up with the transfer of commercial defense technology to the private sector.
In the United States, the ‘Silicon Valley’ and its innovations started with the transfer of technology from the military to domestic companies. Stanford University under the leadership of its innovative President Talmadge, an engineer in a humanities-based school, decided to add Engineering expertise to its curriculum in the ‘30s. As a result, at the start of World War II when investment in the military was ramped up, Stanford established a research arm called the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) where teachers and students could collaborate to develop military and aeronautic innovations. This was the start of Silicon Valley where SRI was successful in transferring its cutting-edge military innovation to private sector commercialization. Now the United States is sought after as a global tech behemoth to share the fruits of these innovations. Israel followed the same path and now is a leader in technological innovation.
Canada never took this innovative step. Rather defense research was husbanded by crown agencies. In 1990, the various military research labs were amalgamated as the Defense Research and Development Branch. In 2017, Justin Trudeau via his Defense Minister announced a strategic review of the defense policy and a reorganization of Canada’s defense research agencies while pledging to increase military spending by 70% of the next seven years. This is a good step forward. Still, publicly funded technology advances in government have fallen behind the rate of private sector innovations and commercialization. This is a failure of leadership.
Leadership and Scandals
Power incites malfeasance. Each Prime Minister has experienced imbroglios and scandals to tax his leadership. How the Prime Minister moves to quickly squelch problems that quickly arise is a test of leadership.
Most Prime Ministers have these issues. The Munsinger Scandal, The Spencer Spy, the Hal Banks prison escape, the Rivard Affair, Terminal One Inquiry at Pearson airport, the Airbus Scandal, the Shawinigate hassle and the Quebec Adcam Sponsorship Commission Enquiry and trials, the John Duffy imbroglio, the India travel fiasco, the Wilson-Boulter dispute, the SNC Lavalin matter, just to name a few. Politics is littered with scandals large and small. How each Prime Minister reacts and reacts quickly is a test of leadership, if not his longevity. The only solace to leaders is that time seems to dilute, if not dissolve, the scandals as the leader’s legacies outlive the false steps and foibles taken during his tenure. History acts as a marvelous healer as the leader’s virtues outweigh his vices.
Isaiah Berlin, the astute English observer of leadership, divided the leaders into two categories – the hedgehog and the fox. “The fox knows many things, the hedgehog one big thing”, he wrote.64 There appears an inherent contradiction. Leaders must know many things to even decide on one big thing. Mr. Lincoln knew and did many things before he did one big thing. I leave it to the readers to decide.65
1Each leader who aspires to lead Parliament indeed any politician in Canada should read and reread ‘The Will of the People: Churchill and Parliamentary Democracy’ by Martin Gilbert (Vintage Canada, 2006).
2In 1934, Ivan Maisky, the recently appointed Soviet Russian Ambassador to England, met with Winston Churchill for the first time. Churchill was then an outlier of the Conservative Party in his ‘wilderness years’. A few days later, Lord Beaverbrook (William Maxwell Aiken, Canada born publisher of Daily Express group of newspapers and later a Cabinet Minister under Churchill during World War II) wrote Ivan Maisky about Churchill the following, “I send you a strong recommendation of that gentleman. … In character he is without a rival in British politics. I know all about his prejudices. But a man of character who tells the truth is worth much to a nation.” – ‘The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, 1932-1943’, edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky (Yale University Press, 2015, pp. 50).
3Winston Churchill ran for election to House of Common in England, the mother of all Parliaments, eighteen times. He was unsuccessful in five of those election campaigns.
4Considered by many as a crucial, concise, practical guide to political leadership, read ‘Churchill On Leadership: Executive Success in The Face of Adversity’ by Steven F. Hayward (Prima Publishing, 1997).
5Leaders like the Roosevelts, Reagan, and Churchill were all incredibly optimistic.
6All eleven Prime Ministers enjoyed robust health and were disciplined in their culinary habits during their time in office. Jean Chrétien had a heart operation but quickly recovered while in office.
7Just when you think you have read all books on the facts of Winston Churchill’s political and writing career along comes another volume: ‘Churchill – Walking With Destiny’ by Andrew Roberts (Penguin Random House LLC, 2018). On page forty-nine, Robert sums up Churchill’s “five elements to great oratory” – appreciation of words, sound and cadence, accumulated argument, analogy, and emotion and passion of the speaker.
8For concision, I have used the masculine.
9John Diefenbaker loved to fish for a change of pace. Mike Pearson took time to watch sports programs. Pierre Trudeau understood the need for down time to reflect. He regularly visited a Prime Ministerial retreat outside Ottawa at Harrington Lake as did Brian Mulroney. Jean Chrétien took Trudeau’s advice and followed suit when he was Prime Minister. John Turner loved to spend vacation time at the Lake of Woods and a family vacation home in Nova Scotia when a minister. Stephen Harper practiced with a small band when he could.
10Donald MacDonald, when he briefly sought Liberal leadership, withdrew wisely assessing himself, saying he did not possess the ‘royal jelly’.
11‘Transference’ as first defined by Freud, then applied in political theory, is the redirection of repressed or flawed behaviour unto another political actor.
12“The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” – ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, T.S. Elliot
13Pollsters who undertake daily and strategize polls for leaders look for the ‘soft spot’ in public opinion. American leaders of late have focused on the ‘middle-class’ as their key target market. The Americans divined this demographic. This is now mimicked in Canada. The problem of course is who are the members of the middle-class? And should their needs be a leader’s paramount pre-occupation? Is designating the ‘middle-class’ for preferential treatment a ‘class’ argument like Marxists who relished ‘class’ warfare, or at least divisions amongst the so-called classes?
14Jean Pelletier for his outstanding service to Jean Chrétien was appointed Head of Via Rail and then summarily dismissed by Chrétien’s successor Paul Martin. For over a decade, Pelletier fought in the courts for damages for his job loss, damages to his reputation, and costs. Ultimately, he was vindicated in the courts with a healthy judgement on all three claims.
15Churchill personified this approach to politics when he was gracious to his political opponents both on the opposite side and adversaries within his own party. He used the word ‘magnanimous’ in victory. Churchill never held grudges. Churchill recalled his ‘wilderness years’ from 1929 to 1939 when he was cast off from higher office and shunned by friends and foes alike when he opposed ‘appeasement’, the conventional sentiment in the U.K. at the time. He readily forgave his foes and was gracious to his enemies.
16Winston Churchill could not figure out what was on Franklin Roosevelt’s mind. Churchill, when he and Roosevelt met in Cairo during their meeting in 1943, arranged for their visit to the Sphinx. Churchill considered that Roosevelt, like the enigma of the Sphinx, kept his own counsel. As one historian wrote, “…he [Roosevelt] was as inscrutable as the Sphinx at his core, he remained shrouded, unknowable, dispassionate.” – ‘1944 FDR and The Year That Changed History’ by Jay Winik (Simon and Schuster, 2015).
17A leading poet of the 20th century, Zbigniew Herbert, a Pole who refused to leave his native land while in the grips of communism, wrote that ‘truth’ is ‘beauty’. Facts are important. Words are important. “A bird is a bird…slavery means slavery…a knife is a knife…death remains death...” (1983).
18Required reading for a superb analysis of Presidential crisis management is chapter twelve in Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon Schuster, New York, 2018. Kearns recounts how Theodore Roosevelt handled a crippling national miner’s strike and Franklin Roosevelt on the economic crisis he inherited in 1932 to gain public confidence in his rapid moves the first 100 days in office.
19In 1979, Pierre Trudeau sensed he was losing the election. For a while, well before the election, he was ahead on the polls. He had waited too long. I helped organize a rally at Maple Leaf Gardens as a finale to the campaign televised by Peter Raymont’s documentary on Trudeau believing economics was always a key to any campaign. Trudeau’s heart was not on the economic message. Rather, he felt the repatriation of the Constitution would be a rallying call on his last stand. So, refusing to follow the advice of his campaign advisors, he concluded his speech with words to this effect, “… as for the Constitution, we will bring it home.” Peter’s documentary captured the disappointment in the faces of his advisors including me. The following day, I went to visit my mother who was avid fan of Pierre Trudeau and followed the campaign. “What do you think?” I asked her. She said, “You know I like Pierre Trudeau. He is a good man. But I didn’t understand what he talked about bringing home the Constitution. Is that some kind of breakfast cereal?” I knew then we would lose the election.
20The powers of the Prime Minister, his government, and all Parliamentarians was seen by the public as not held sufficiently in check by the opposition or the media. Witness the rise of independent Parliamentary officers to check egregious government and officials conduct. These independent officers include: Auditor General, Chief Election Officer, Commissioner of Lobbying, Conflicts of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Information Commissioner, Parliamentary Budget Officer, Privacy Commissioner, and Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. Each of these Parliamentary officers has full legislative powers of investigation and public action after reporting their findings whether on their own accord or by request of the public under separate acts of Parliament. These reports are geared to curb egregious conduct and excess use of powers. Prime Ministers, Governments, Members of Parliament, and public servants have felt the sting of their reports. In the main, it is left to the electorate to correct carefully documented abuses of power.
21Two secretariats report directly to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the political arm of the Prime Minister, and the Privy Council Office (PCO), the public service arm of the Prime Minister.
22When and how to remove a Cabinet Minister or change Cabinet are delicate and yet, vital decisions to maintain public confidence. For an excellent consideration of the nature of Cabinet deliberations under adversity, read Ministers At War: Winston Churchill And His War Cabinet by Jonathan Schneer (Basic Books, 2014). All Behind You, Winston: Churchill’s Great Coalition 1940-1945 by Roger Hermiston (Aurum Press, 2017) is another excellent historical analysis of cabinet deliberations under Churchill and is a must read as well.
23Another reminder of the limited access to the Prime Minister is the now thousands of emails he receives each day. Each Prime Minister handles this aspect of his leadership differently. Normally, each letter and email receive a response. The days of a Prime Minister responding to each missive personally is over. Diefenbaker and Pearson both responded to some personal correspondence from close friends and outside advisor. Pierre Trudeau would respond to my notes and memos himself as did John Turner. Turner would personally pen notes of condolences or thanks. Reagan and Obama would be given a small sample of letters to respond to personally. These would be publicized from time-to-time.
24Of course, the American President is the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, but the President is constrained by a large array of explicit legislative ‘checks and balances’ in Congress, the Judiciary and the Constitution, unlike the Canadian Prime Minister whose powers cannot be attenuated, except periodically by the Judiciary when it opines on the Constitution (though at times beyond the scope of the intent of the Constitution), and occasionally, by the spotlight of the media and of course, by the polls. The Opposition in Parliament, rarely covered in a major way by the media, has only episodic success in changing a Prime Minister’s chosen course of action, mainly supported by a twitch in the polls.
25Bill Clinton, mired in his impeachment in Congress, belatedly bombed targets in war torn Yugoslavia at the behest of Tony Blair. This strategy was called ‘Wag The Dog’ by skeptical observers.
26Charles Krauthammer, a brilliant American commentator and journalist, who went from being a Democrat to a Republican once opined, “Anyone who stops believing in religion, can believe in anything”.
27Mike Pearson was a clear exception to the norm. He appointed Trudeau, Turner and Chrétien to his Cabinet at the same time who each in turn became Prime Minister. John Turner sent me an autographed photo of this turning point in his life and the lives of Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien.
28Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, wrote Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Basic Books, 1993). Four major indices were defined, intra-personal intelligence, inter-personal intelligence, linguistic intelligence, and logical/mathematical intelligence. This complex analysis sheds some light on leadership characteristics but are difficult to ascertain, and then, only in hindsight.
29See also The Presidential Difference: Leadership Styles from FDR to Obama by Fred I. Greenstein (Simon and Schuster, 2009) who noted political skill, vision, cognitive style, organization capacity, able to communicate, but above all ‘emotional intelligence’ – an essential criteria – see also section – Leadership Index. Greenstein, an eminent American scholar who wrote extensively about U.S.A. Presidential leaders through the lens of behavioural science.
30Charisma lies in the mysterious impact the leader has on his close associates and his ardent supporters who share his intense belief in the correctness of his ideas and vision. This intensity, especially after becoming Prime Minister, radiates to his larger audience directly and through the media as he imposes his will to a generally disengaged or disinterested public.
31Canada is diverse, still largely undeveloped, and holds sovereignty over the second largest landmass in the world with the second largest source of fresh water which, too much to our regret, is now polluted to a startling degree. Climate change policies do not significantly affect fresh water pollution.
32In caucus, Pierre Trudeau sat at the end of a long-raised dais with the caucus chair, vice chair, whip, and other caucus leaders. He never interrupted the caucus but would rise at the very end to deliver his assessment of the issues raised and how to proceed. He was irritated if a member approached him just before, or during, caucus because he wanted to concentrate on what each member had to say, how he said it and the member’s body motions.
33Read Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti (First edition, published Victor Gollancz, London, 1962). Canetti wrote his masterful work as he observed Nazi and fascist leaders fuse the loyalties of their followers that freed them to follow their own ideas without restraint. Unquestioning loyalty to the leader is the core of untrammelled autocratic behaviour.
34Dwight Eisenhower initially had a high regard for Adlai Stevenson. This changed when Adlai Stevenson proclaimed his reluctance to run for President. “O that this cup should pass from these lips.” After that, Eisenhower refused to watch Adlai Stevenson on TV or listen to him again.
35When the parties dissolved their wartime union in 1945 led by the rank and file of Labour who refused to honour Clement Atlee’s agreement with Churchill after the defeat of Hitler to delay the election for several years at least until Japan was defeated. Churchill lost power in that election.
36Like George Orwell, Trudeau believed that revising history was a mistake, a practice that in the end intensified intolerance as revealed by autocrats like Hitler and Stalin who sought to rewrite history to suit their ideologies. Trudeau refused to apologize for the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians as rewriting history was a sham. This was the subject of my maiden speech in the Senate shortly after he appointed me to persuade Trudeau to change his mind. I did not succeed. Perhaps he was right after all. You cannot rewrite history. Only improve it in the future.
37The British philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, in a delightful essay entitled The Hedgehog and the Fox divided leaders as a ‘fox who knows many things’ or a hedgehog that knows one important thing.
38Kennedy, a skilled writer, wrote While England Slept, a history of English appeasement that led to World War II and Prelude to Leadership: The Post-War Diary of John F. Kennedy published in 1945 by Regnery Publishing in his ‘20s. Later as a Senator, he wrote Profiles in Courage, stories of heroes, public figures, who went against public opinion as he never did! His book on immigration (A Nation of Immigrants, Harper Collins, 1964) is an interesting insight of the current debate about immigration in the United States and elsewhere.
39A Very Public Life, 2 vols., by Paul Martin Sr. (Deneau Publishing, 1985).
40One Canada, Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker: The Crusading Years 1895 to 1956 (Macmillan of Canada, 1975). One Canada, Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker: The Years of Achievement 1956 to 1962 (Macmillan of Canada, 1976). One Canada, Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker: The Tumultuous Years 1962 to 1967 (Macmillan of Canada, 1977).
41Democracy in World Politics (Princeton University Press, 1955). Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1959). The Four Faces of Peace and the International Outlook (Dodd, Mead, 1964). The Crisis of Development (Praeger, 1970). Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson (Quadrangle Books, 1972).
42How We Lead: Canada in a Century of Change (Random House Canada, 2013). Nation Too Good To Lose: Renewing The Purpose Of Canada (Key Porter Books, 1994).
43Memoirs (McClelland & Stewart, 1993). Towards A Just Society: The Trudeau Years, with Thomas S. Axworthy (eds.) (Viking, 1990).
44 Politics of Purpose: The Right Honourable John N. Turner, 17th Prime Minister of Canada (Queen’s University, 2009). I helped collect his speeches with Lloyd Axworthy and David Smith, some which I helped draft when I served as his first Executive Assistant and speech writer which was first published and released during his drive for leadership in 1968.
45Brian Mulroney Memoirs (Emblem Editions; 2008).
46Time and Chance (Doubleday Canada, 1996).
47My Years as Prime Minister (Knopf Canada, 2007) and Straight from the Heart (Key Porter Books, 1985).
48My Stories, My Times by Jean Chrétien (Random House of Canada, 2018).
49Hell or High Water: My Life in and out of Politics (Emblem Edition, 2009).
50Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption by Stephen Harper (Signal, 2018).
51Common Ground (HarperCollins Publishers, 2014) which was written in cooperation with a skilled journalist, Jonathan Kay.
52“Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.” – Winston Churchill to an American student before a Royal coronation in Westminster Hall (1953).
53Churchill wrote numerous histories and historical biographies. These include a history of World War I The World Crisis, The Second World War, a multi-volume history of his ancestor John Churchill, Lord Marlborough, the storied victor over Louis XIV in Europe, a biography of his father and inspiration Lord Randolph Churchill and many others. Read J.H. Plumb’s The Making of An Historian (University of Georgia Press, 1989) for a more nuanced assessment of Churchill as a historian which I do not share. Judge for yourself, after your reading selection of Churchill’s books on Churchill’s version of history.
54Laurier’s life and times inspired all Prime Ministers.
55In World War I, Diefenbaker saw military service overseas. Invalided, he returned to Canada to continue his education. Diefenbaker got an M.A. in Economics and Politics from the University of Saskatchewan. Then he went on to Law School also at University of Saskatchewan.
56The most candid of modern leaders from Quebec of their early indoctrination by priests on French Canadian exceptionalism was Rene Levesque in his book Memoirs (McClelland and Stewart, 1986). He wrote on page 200, “We formed a people who were distinct and consequently unique in the world. We, that is, we French-speaking Quebecois, are not French, or at least haven’t been so for centuries. Observers of the French regime had recognized this fact well before the Conquest. A new continent had already forged a new and original type of man, and the small interest the Old Country showed in him only reinforced his spirit of independence…”
57There is little written or known about each Prime Minister’s personal library. If a historian can pry out these facts, we will gain insight into the Prime Minister’s mind and sense of history. I visited Churchill’s library at Chartwell Manor, his country home in Kent, numerous times. It was capacious and well ordered. David Ben Gurion’s home in Tel Aviv, Israel, has four libraries containing over 20,000 volumes, one of which served as a meeting room. His library includes Latin, Greek, Turkish, English, German, Russian, French, and other Slavic languages. Pierre Trudeau in his last home in Montreal had a large well-arranged library on one floor.
58Fred I. Greenstein The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to George W. Bush (Princeton University Press, 2004).
59The only time I led my class at the University of Toronto Law School was in international law. I served in the Senate Committee of Foreign Affairs and International Trade for twenty-six years. Law School at The University of Toronto taught me three things which continue to resonate in my mind. Dean ‘Caesar’ who taught Torts emphasized the search for facts. Facts make a difference. Find the facts and then truth based on fairness and justice will emerge. Eugene La Brie who taught International Law opined that international law initially based on power was evolving slowly on comity, history, fairness, and justice. Bora Laskin who taught Constitutional Law insisted we read the Constitution and precedents with great care to understand how judges are tempted to place their policies above the ‘rule of law’ and the written Constitution. Good advice to Prime Ministers and judges.
60St. Laurent’s speech on the principles of Canada’s foreign policy remains a masterpiece of insight and analyses (The Foundations of Canadian Policy in World Affairs at the Duncan and John Gray Memorial Lecture, University of Toronto, 13 January 1947).
61Greek merchants bought used Canadian ships at low cost and converted them to large commercial fleets.
62Jean Chrétien as a young M.P. introduced a private member’s bill to change the name of TransCanada to Air Canada.
63Russia, our neighbour to the north with 1/10 the size of Canada’s economy with a population of 147 million compared to Canada’s 37 million has a larger fleet for the far north and a larger better equipped land and air force. While Russia occupies the globe’s largest landmass of 17 million square kilometers, Canada occupies the second largest landmass (10 million square kilometers).
64The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History by Isaiah Berlin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953).
65Read On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis (Penguin Press, New York, 2018) who explores the complex question of leadership with erudition and compelling insight as he offers his take on measuring leaders. One of the most interesting reads on leadership is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s beautifully written examination of four American Presidents and how they overcame personal challenges to achieve their political goals – Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon Schuster, 2018).