Dare I 'Blaspheme'?

I dare.

Given the hagiography that has unfolded since the passing of Brian Mulroney, I now take a step into waters that his enthusiasts might deem sacrilegious, even blasphemous. Despite his achievements (which largely look good in contrast to those of  today's 'leaders'), the late prime minister, in my view, was a shallow man who lacked insight into his own soul.

You may recall that one of his proudest achievements was that he sang for the Colonel  (Colonel McCormick) when he was nine years old. So impressed was he by this American's investment in Baie Comeau that he developed a fawning, life-long love of all things American, culminating in his onstage  singing of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling with Ronald and Nancy Reagan in the eighties. It was a performance he reprised in 2017 for Donald Trump, another man he greatly admired, at Mar-a-Largo.

The Globe's Lawrence Martin, whether intentionally or not, reveals the true shallowness of the man. Regarding his bond with Trump, he writes

Their relationship, Mr. Mulroney told me in an interview last year, went back decades to when they saw each other a lot in New York. It continued in Palm Beach, Fla., where he had a residence close to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which Mr. Mulroney and his family visited frequently.

He and Mr. Trump were such friends that shortly after Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017, he sang When Irish Eyes Are Smiling for Mr. Trump at a Mar-a-Lago reception. He’d sung it with Ronald Reagan at the Shamrock Summit in Quebec City in 1985.

In fact, Mr. Mulroney believed Mr. Trump could be a highly successful president, just like the Gipper. 

Mulroney revealed to Martin that he thought Trump would be a good president, swept up in the majesty of office, and didn't see his right-wing populism coming. Those of us with both a pulse and critical thinking skills, I suspect, were not overtaken with the surprise Mulroney undoubtedly felt but never acknowledged when Trump turned out to be manifestly unfit for office.

During the interview, the late PM revealed he didn't blame the forces unleashed by Trump as responsible for America's current ills:

You have to look ... at “the capture of the Democratic Party by the extreme left-wing – The Squad and the unions. Joe Biden has been held hostage by the left wing of the party. And I know Joe well and I like him. But that’s what happened.”

He concurred that the U.S. democracy was in dire condition and the country brutally divided. “I understand all that, but that doesn’t change the reality that this is the greatest nation on Earth...

I submit that those dogmatic assertions would be met with less than universal assent.

For me, however, the greatest indication of Mulroney's lack of personal insight and reflective capacity is what he reveals about his ideas on free trade.

In our interview, Mr. Mulroney wanted to clear up a misconception: the idea that he was a johnny-come-lately to the idea of free trade. “Look, I had been president of the Iron Ore Company for nine years. And hell, the whole concept of the Iron Ore Company was trade. I was all over the world from Romania to China to Taiwan to Brazil, non-stop.”

While it’s true, he said, that in the 1983 Tory leadership campaign he stridently opposed free trade, it was because Canadians weren’t prepared to hear of it then and he couldn’t have won on it. “You have to remember the antipathy toward Reagan was horrific in Canada, disgraceful.”

What kind of man openly and shamelessly, even proudly, admits he lied both to his own party and the Canadian public?

The legacy of Brian Mulroney will, without doubt, be persistently promulgated and promoted in the days leading up to his state funeral. However, we do a grave disservice to critical thinkers everywhere not to challenge the elevation to secular sainthood many of his boosters clearly wish for him.