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Monday, May 25, 2009

He Still Annoys Us

Like Father...

Pierre Trudeau is considered far and away the best prime minister Canada has seen in the past four decades.

Nearly 40 per cent of Canadians accord him that honour, according to a new Toronto Star/Angus Reid Strategies online survey.

Trudeau has maintained the upper hand on this question since 2007.

Coming in a distant second is Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at 11 per cent.

Jean Chrétien is third at 9 per cent and Brian Mulroney is next at 8 per cent.

Like Son...

Giggling women, flushed faces and wide-eyed stares. A small-scale Trudeaumania touched down in Orillia last night with the arrival of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau's first-born son, Justin.

The 37-year-old MP for the Montreal riding of Papineau, Quebec, was the guest of honour at a $150-a-plate fundraising dinner last night, hosted by the Simcoe North federal riding association.

Trudeau, along with all Liberal MPs were asked by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, to "reach out" to Canadians, Trudeau said, explaining his visit.


How to explain it.  Fresh from some saner region of the planet, Trudeau worship is one of the more bizarre but little noticed - by outsiders - phenomenons of Canadian life.  It's that bit of weirdness that makes up for the otherwise bland efficiency of our national life.  Typically when political leaders nearly bankrupt a country, they flee for warmer climes, after the traditional pit stop at a discrete Swiss banker.  Pierre Le Grande could be seen strolling down the streets of Montreal, beret firmly atop his head, well into old age.  Even Joe Clark got himself punched wandering down one of the city's thoroughfares.  If fiscal incontinence is not be one of your buttons, playing brinksmanship with the country's unity should be.  Was it really necessary to renegotiate and patriate the constitution?  With the country in one of its worst recessions since the war ?  The Charter?  Oh, yes that fundamental document protecting our rights that - as per Section One and the Oakes Test - can be rendered as impermeable as swiss cheese on the whim of the Supreme Court.  

The real father of modern Canada is not Pierre Trudeau, but Lester Pearson.  There was no Pearsonmania in the early 1960s.  Despite four kicks at the can (1958, 1962, 1963, 1965), he never won a majority government.  Medicare, CPP, the Flag, Peacekeeping and Bilingualism were all inaugurated by the man dubbed Mike by one of his World War One military instructors.  He also managed to balance the budget, a feat which mostly eluded his successor.  Even from the perspective of a hard core social democrat, the monuments and TV movies should be raised not to Pierre but Mike.  Pearson, however, wore a bow-tie.  When awarded the Nobel Peace Prize his legendary response was "Gosh."  Charles de Gaulle said "Vive Le Quebec Libre,"  Pearson became furious.  

He was simply too nice, and decent a man to project rage effectively.  The television cameras caught an old man looking flustered.  Many in 1967 thought his sandal wearing, Sartre quoting Justice Minister might have delivered a devastating riposte even Le Monde would have put on its front page.  Pearson, the most radical of our Prime Ministers, was the most boringly conventional in appearance.  Another gray man, distinguished only by the bow-tie and jovial manner.  He made social democracy look sensible and non-threatening.  Very Canadian.  He was what we thought we were.  Trudeau was what we wanted to be. The late middle aged hippie made the welfare state seem sexy and modern.  The new Canada would be new in everything.  Whither is fled the visionary gleam?  It now resides in a thirty-something ex-drama school teacher with no discernible personal accomplishments.  A cute non-entity with an over wrought oratorical style.  The hope, probably vain, is that Trudeau the Younger will make statism seem sexy again, and the boomers and their vision of Canada seem young once more.  It's a possibility the rest of us should shudder at.  

(CP)

Posted by Richard Anderson on May 25, 2009 | Permalink

Comments

Trudeau was popular for the same reason Clinton was popular: He had a certain type of charisma that made women swoon. Call me sexist, but it's hard to respect a gender that behaves like the hens in the old Porky Pig cartoon "Swooner Crooner." Of course, if more hot babes were available for election, we might see men doing the same, so perhaps I'm being hasty. But no matter who does it, it's just plain stupid. Policy is the furthest thing from these voters' minds when their hormones are surging.

Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-25 7:54:29 AM

Unlike Clinton, Trudeau proved to have a dark, mean side. His invasion of Quebec in 1970 and the National Energy Program in 1980 proved that beyond any reasonable doubt. He's the Canadian Pinochet. May he burn in hell.

Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-05-25 8:16:00 AM

I don't know, Zeb; Clinton laid quite a few political time bombs for his successor (the biggest, September 11, was unintentional). And Clinton has earned far more of this enemies than Bush has.

That said, Clinton's mean streak is nothing compared to his wife's. Shrillary and PET would likely have got on famously as husband and wife.

Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-25 9:04:05 AM

I'm not sure what the point of this article really is but, Pearson and Trudeau were both assholes. Hell people actually look FONDLY back on how Pearson set us up for decades of economic faliure with blind unplanned social programs, and Trudeau abridged freedoms and ass raped half the country to prop up the central Canadian political industrial orgy.

Both men were terrible in the long view, Trudeau Mk. II will be just as bad.

And as for Clinton, the President of The United States of America, hardly has anywhere near the control over Congress that the Prime Minister has over not just Parliament but other areas of the Canadian Government, that's why it's said we elect four year dictatorships.

Posted by: Pete | 2009-05-25 9:38:31 AM

.........emmigrated to Canada in '65 voted against PET in '67 could not belive how people fauned over him,the worst thing that happened to a great country.

Posted by: Goff Tayler | 2009-05-25 10:05:19 AM

Clinton may have been inept, but Trudeau was actually cruel. He harmed people - by arresting them en masse in Quebec in 1970, and by depriving Albertans of their livelihoods in the NEP. He should have been prosecuted for what he did.

Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-05-25 10:08:14 AM

Trudeau was great, Cretien was pretty damn good, Harper, is like a hemorhoid on the asshole of Canada. This country needs a healthy dose of preparation-H.

Posted by: DrGreenthumb | 2009-05-25 11:20:52 AM

"Trudeau was great". What kind of criteria did you use to come to that conclusion?

Posted by: Charles | 2009-05-25 11:30:45 AM

"What kind of criteria did you use to come to that conclusion?"

That he was a nasty, iconoclastic radical who was never happier than when hacking the sacred out of society and cramming his middle finger up people's rectums. Not unlike Greenthumb himself, actually.

Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-25 11:35:53 AM

I fail to see how anyone but a leftist or Marxist could think Trudeau was "great".

Posted by: Charles | 2009-05-25 11:53:32 AM

I fail to see how anyone, right or left, could see Trudeau as being anything but a maniac.

Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-05-25 12:21:37 PM

From the conservatives' platform during the 2008 federal election:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper understands the global financial crisis. His plan for the way forward has been clear and consistent: balanced budgets, lower taxes, investments to create jobs and keeping inflation low.

Wow.

Posted by: Bob Peloquin | 2009-05-25 5:45:14 PM


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