No, my take on Mulroney (quite apart from the fact that I think his
ideology was bilious, not to mention obviously runious) is that he was
cynical, short-sighted, and just not tremendously bright (you could also
see this when he talked -- he had a sort of surface persuasiveness, but
there wasn't really a lot going on inside). Before Mulroney, the saying
was (as we all remember) "Conservative governments are like measles: you
get them once a lifetime". Mulroney's innovation was to sit down and look
at the numbers and realize that the Conservatives could actually win if
only, in addition to their standard and insufficient right-wing power
base, they could add a *second* power base, by harnessing the separatist
forces in Quebec.
So he dredged up all the rhetoric about "Quebec was ignored in 1982", blah
blah, even though the actual events of 1982 (I can't remember the details
now, although it was all detailed quite painstakingly during the Meech
Lake nonsense, but when you hear what actually went on, it bears no
relation whatsoever to how it's been reconstructed by the separatists in
the meantime) consisted of little more than minor political stunts at the
provincial level, with no legal bearing on the federal process of passing
a new Constitution with unanimous approval in parliament. And it worked:
Mulroney managed to harness a lot of latent passion at the provincial
level as active passion at the federal level -- since his was the party
that was going to "give Quebec its due, at last". And he handily won two
elections through this bizarre coalition. (And Darren is probably right
that he also entertained delusions about nation-building in some
Trudeau-beating sense.)
Of course, those of us who lived in Winnipeg during the days when the
CF-18 airplane contract was (openly) awarded to Quebec even though a
Winnipeg company had the best bid might question the validity of such
statements about Quebec and its due, but it's far too late in the day to
dredge all that up now. The National just reported a poll that showed 46%
for separation, 40% against, and the future of my country is turning on
the truism that people *tend* to be more cautions in voting booths than in
poll responses. The Canadian government has just ordered 15 million
voter-registration forms, just in case "OUI" wins and the rest of us have
to vote -- on what question, god only knows...
Back to Mulroney: in the last Canadian election, the inevitable happened:
the Conservative party support, now consisting of two groups with
virtually no interests in common, fractured along natural lines, leading
to the sudden creation of two new political parties, one for each side of
the unholy alliance -- cranky right-wing traditionalists, and Quebec
separatists. Leaving essentially zero support in the middle, and
resulting in one of the most astonishing self-immolations ever witnessed
in politics (the Conservative party went in with a couple hundred seats,
and emerged with 2, count'em, *2*). I don't think this was Mulroney's
plan, I just don't think he thought particularly far ahead.
> Since Mulroney now lives in Montreal (and is a
> quebecer), it's not unlikely that, in the event of separation, Mulroney
> would emerge into politics again and attempt to become president of
> quebec"?
That would mean having to, at some point, occupy the same room with
Bouchard, and I don't that's likely anytime soon. Even cynical
short-sighted non-bright people have feelings, and it's got to hurt more
than a little to have one of your friends stab you in the stomach and
form a splinter party dedicated to your destruction.
Anyway, Mulroney's a *conservative*, and this Quebec thing (in so far as
it's driven by content at all) is supposedly driven by some desire to
formulate a country in the 1960s-era Trudeau pink-capitalist mode, so I
can't imagine a lot of congruence there. In fact, I'm guessing that
Mulroney transferred his assets into US funds some time ago (hell, I'm
guessing that Mulroney never had any assets *not* in US funds).
Tonight, at a departmental party, we Canadians huddled in the corners and
talked about this, drawing in various passing Americans. Somebody here is
driving to Windsor tomorrow to drain his Canadian bank account and get
American cash. As we talked, we realized that we had no idea about even
such basic things as whether the Canadian government would be willing or
able to guarantee bank deposits in the event of one or more of the big
banks going down (note that it doesn't take much more than a bunch of
people simultaneously formulating the previous thought to *cause* one of
the big banks to go down). Remember that this country issues large
amounts of bonds to foreign countries on a daily basis to get operating
funds; recall that the present Liberal government has been walking a
desparate tightrope to try and phase out this constant borrowing within a
year or three *without* depressing the economy to the point where they
lose more than they gain and make everything worse; do we have any idea
what it will take to get Japan to buy our bonds if we announce a messy
separation? 20% interest rates, anyone? Would *you* buy Canadian bonds
under those circumstances? Not in five years, but right now, today, to
keep the Canadian economy from going into immediate freefall?
So we wait, a nation of 26 million, for the verdict of as few as 3 million
people. As if the "destiny" of the rest of us somehow doesn't matter --
or worse, as if we're somehow not causally connected at all.
-- Evan Kirchhoff, kirchh@umich.edu