LARRY ZOLF:
Mulroney the godfather
CBC News Viewpoint | October 20, 2003 | More from Larry Zolf
It is truly amazing to note David Orchard's strenuous criticisms of Peter MacKay for reneging on the PC leadership convention deal. The optics of that convention should have given Orchard pause. The arrival in the hall of Brian Mulroney, keynote speaker, the standing ovations and constant cheers for the last Tory messiah, were proof positive that the general mood of the delegates was all in favour of Mulroney's message which was: "Free Trade is great" and "Unite the right, please."
What Orchard got wrong was that MacKay had always been in bed with Mulroney. MacKay's dad, Elmer, was a fierce Mulroney loyalist and supporter. Elmer understood that Orchard or no Orchard common sense called for what Mulroney the godfather was dishing out to the faithful at the leadership podium.
Orchard also did not understand that to Mulroney he was an outsider, a left-wing crank with no real credentials in the Conservative party. Orchard didn't understand Mulroney's ambition and ego drive to erase the 1993 Tory debacle one way or another.
The 1993 election saw Mulroney's Western base destroyed by the election of 52 Manningites or Reformers. Mulroney's 63 Quebec seats were decimated by Lucien Bouchard's defection and the creation of the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc won 54 seats in 1993; the Tories lost 167.
All that was galling to a politician like Mulroney. It hurt him to hear both from the media and the politicians that he had got out from under just in the nick of time. Mulroney, they said, was responsible for the 1993 Tory two-seat disaster, a disaster that inevitably spelt an end to the old PC party. Mulroney, they said, was the most hated political leader in Canadian history; 1993 proved that after Mulroney came the deluge.
For someone as thin-skinned as Mulroney, these charges or innuendoes really hurt. Certainly his Irish soul was not affected a wit by the charge that he was too smarmy, too in bed with the hated Americans to deserve the affection and respect of his fellow Canadians.
Nor did Mulroney really worry or care about his hated GST. Mulroney preferred an open tax to a hidden one and was satisfied that he was doing the right thing. Nor did he care too much that he was loathed by academics and pointy-headed thinkers from all parties and persuasions.
Mulroney's ferocious anger and deep dislikes always focus on the personal. Chrétien's treatment of Mulroney on Airbus was precisely the kind of thing that drove Mulroney up a wall. To Mulroney it was part of a Chrétien campaign to vilify and destroy Mulroney 's reputation. The libel suit and the apology won the day but it certainly did not take Mulroney out of the category of the most hated prime minister in Canadian history.
Then there was Mulroney's relationship with the media. It went far beyond the traditional. John Sawatsky's unauthorized biography of Mulroney claimed he had contracted venereal disease from an Africville prostitute while a student at Dalhousie. Frank magazine ran a satirical contest about the deflowering of Mulroney's daughter Caroline.
In an interview with Mulroney at 24 Sussex, Hana Gartner asked about Frank. Mulroney jumped up and threatened to take a rifle and shoot its editor.
But all these were minor compared to the complaint that Mulroney was a coward who abandoned the Tory ship to Manning and the Bloc, and was responsible for the worst electoral disaster in Canadian history. The charge that Mulroney was the real destroyer of the Tory party bothered him enormously. Mulroney felt that the West and Bouchard had betrayed him and his legacy. It was Manning and Bouchard who did the Tory party in, not Brian Mulroney.
Mulroney wasn't satisfied with his new role as the pal of the Bush family and three American presidents. Nor was he satisfied to just sit on boards and have big corporate clients both in Canada and the United States. Mulroney's fat cat look, his comfort in his newfound wealth and prestige, was not enough to assuage the hurt pride of the great blarney merchant.
It was this hurt pride that made Brian Mulroney come to the rescue of the Tory party, led by his child disciple, Peter MacKay. Mulroney's fingerprints are all over the MacKay-Harper deal.
Peter MacKay, influenced by his father, listened long and hard as Mulroney explained to him how much the Tories loved Free Trade and how little was the significance of Orchard's opposition to it. One could almost hear Mulroney explaining to MacKay that it was Orchard who was trying to shanghai the Tory party from its real Mulroney roots.
The advice Mulroney was giving MacKay time after time was the hell with Orchard. Bay Street doesn't want a separate Tory party and will only deal with a fused new party. The Alliance, Mulroney told MacKay, can be trusted to listen to the voices of Mulroney, Don Mazankowski and Elmer MacKay.
But even better than that, it was Mulroney as godfather of the new Tory party who brought Bill Davis into the picture. Former Ontario premier Davis's credentials as a Dalton Camp Red Tory are impressive. If Davis was prepared to act on behalf of Mulroney the godfather, how could MacKay, Mulroney's disciple, do anything but agree?
The Bill Davis signing on was a real boost up for Mulroney. It was among the Red Davis Tories and the Dalton Camp Tories that Mulroney met a great deal of opposition and resentment. Mulroney, it was said, had hired Camp and then trivialized him.
It was Camp who felt that Mulroney had become too conservative, too Republican for the good of the country and the party. It was the Red Tories and their friends in the media who spread the base canard that it was Mulroney, not Kim Campbell, who had killed the Tory party.
Getting Bill Davis onside was a real Mulroney triumph. Bill Davis put the rubber stamp to the Tory party gladly. In the process, Davis rubbed the slate clean, with no fallout to godfather Mulroney.
Mulroney and Davis both held out for a leadership race of the new party to be based on each riding being equal no matter the size of the membership. That is 200 Quebec members in one riding got the same vote for leader as 10,000 Calgary members in another riding.
Perhaps here, too, the godfather can be helpful in the new merger. After all, Mulroney built his own Quebec machine similarly from the ground up and it worked until Bouchard's betrayal.
Is Mulroney going to stand idly by and watch his creation, the new Tory party, founder on the rock of Quebec? Not bloody likely. Mulroney will work hard in Quebec to do the godfatherly thing. Mulroney realizes that his resurrection as a politician is at stake.
Besides, Mulroney needs some new chapters for the memoir he's writing for McClelland & Stewart. Brian Mulroney as godfather of the new Tory party should make for a great ending.
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LARRY ZOLF
POLITICAL COMMENTATOR
Veteran journalist and Canadian political expert Larry Zolf is a regular contributor to CBC News Online. Larry has been a critic, reporter, producer and consultant for CBC news and current affairs since he joined the CBC in 1962. Born and raised in North End Winnipeg, the hotbed of general strikes and socialism, Larry has covered stories such as integration in Mississippi and the October Crisis in Quebec. He was one of the hosts of the CBC's flagship current affairs television show "This Hour Has 7 Days." He is now retired.
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