My latest: RIP, Mr. Mulroney
The biggest achievements in politics – the only achievements, really – are the ones involving risk.
As in, taking a risk. Making a decision, making a statement, making a law that entails risk to you and your career.
Brian Mulroney took risks.
I didn’t work for him. In fact, I worked for Jean Chretien, his Liberal Party opponent. And part of my job was to make the Mulroney government miserable.
Despite that – and when behind closed doors – Martin Brian Mulroney, PC, CC, GOQ, was a bit of a marvel to us. Because he took risks. Because he had guts.
Case in point: South Africa.
In the Eighties, when Mulroney was Prime Minister – and presiding over two successive super-majorities – South Africa still practiced apartheid. Apartheid was institutionalized racism, essentially. It was racial segregation and discrimination that had been forced on the black majority in South Africa by a white minority.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were Brian Mulroney’s closest allies internationally. They professed to oppose apartheid – but they vociferously opposed international sanctions to bring it to an end. Thatcher called them “counterproductive.”
Brian Mulroney stood up to Reagan and Thatcher – and many within his own Conservative Party. In September 1986, Mulroney imposed tough sanctions on the apartheid regime, and encouraged other nations to do likewise. Said he: “I viewed apartheid with the same degree of disgust that I attached to the Nazis — the authors of the most odious offence in modern history.”
Nelson Mandela thanked him for that, saying that Mulroney, and Canada, would be forever remembered for their support.
Mulroney’s other great and courageous achievement: free trade.
And, yes, we Liberals initially opposed it – or, at least, the John Turner-era Grits did (Chretien, as the country would soon see, not so much). But Brian Mulroney saw where the world was heading – with technology ushering in an era of lightning-fast global commerce, dominated by companies all too willing to move to where they could do more business for less.
Mulroney’s free trade stance was targeted by Turner during the 1988 federal election – and, for a while, it very nearly turned the tide against the Tory leader. He could have blinked, then, and backed away. He could have reversed himself. He didn’t. Mulroney persisted – and won another huge majority, and signed a comprehensive free trade deal with the United States.
There were other, less notable, parts to the man. On the Hill, in the pre-Twitter days – when things were more civilized – all of us heard stories about Brian Mulroney’s human side. A gift of ties to Brian Tobin, his Liberal tormentor, when the MP’s son was born.
A call to Chretien during a health scare. Quiet wishes whenever a Liberal was going through personal hardship. Not for publication, ever. But never forgotten by the recipients.
Brian Mulroney was not a great politician and Prime Minister because he won two big elections. He was one of the great ones because he took risks – because he took risks with things that mattered, the things that will be remembered by history.
My deepest condolences to his family, some of whom I now know and consider good friends.
Your Dad was a great one. He will be missed.