Mendacious Politicos

My, my, aren't we getting all hot and bothered over a little bit of innuendo and a whole lot of second-guessing? Well, of course there's substance behind the innuendo and the second-guessing has been nicely ushered along by the clumsy performance of Rahim Jaffer, but he's just an inexperienced past politician, trying to cash in just as all those other cashiered politicians have, before him. It's just that he lacked subtlety, if not imagination.

Add that to his sloppiness in public of a kind that got tongues clacking, and figure in his official helpmeet's official status and very unofficial but officious meltdown bringing her to public scrutiny and you've got the unerringly dubious formula for a closer, much closer look in fairly confined, and inconveniently-subscribed circumstances. There is no public sin quite like narcissism and blatant self-entitlement on the public's dime.

Mind, in much higher echelons of public service many others have done far, far worse and lived to tell the tale, even while the public slavered over its need for revenge. But the experienced brazenly stare down their accusers and the moneyed simply hire clever lawyers, presumably from law firms with elevated reputations that they will themselves join at equally-elevated salaries post-politics.

Take the Right Honourables John Turner, Jean Chretien, and Brian Mulroney, for example. Prime Ministers all in their time, leading Canada into the future as it was then seen, and living the high life in the process. We will excuse Mr. Turner and focus briefly on the remaining brace of exes. Jean Chretien as PM led official teams of Canadian entrepreneurs to China, wined and dined there, and paved the way for his future.

Now he lives high off the same hog, still leading Canadian missions to China, and wiping his plate very clean while padding his bottom line. This was the prime minister of Shawinigate, whose private holdings and business dealings interfered with government agencies, the Right Honourable who tried to strangle a poverty activist who invaded his public space, and for whom Canada can thank for a whole whack of entertainment during "Adscam".

Remember the scheme to make the federal government and specifically the Liberal party of Canada beloved to Quebec, using tax dollars like disposable confetti to promote federalism by way of sponsorship and advertising in Quebec to companies who didn't have to produce anything but which did have to employ Liberal organizers and fundraisers, or alternately, 'donate' funding back to the Liberal Party itself? For some peculiar reason, taxpayers resented this initiative, considering it corrupt. Go figure.

But now Jean Chretien lectures other politicians on the need to go easy on China and its human rights record, and the need to ingratiate ourselves with that huge, enterprising factory floor. Still, Mr. Chretien's motives and actions weren't as universally deplored as those of his predecessor's whom Canadians generally loved to hate. And, come to think of it, Brian Mulroney's smarmy greasiness would have been enough; his corrupt graft-taking was just the muck by the side of the road that signed the temporary death-knell of his party.

A lapse in judgement was all it was, he said gravely, hugely regrettably, at the parliamentary commission interviewing the former Right Honourable (yes, he still does carry that title, unfortunately), and German 'businessman' extraordinaire Karl-Heinz Schreiber was at fault, not Mr. Mulroney, for Mr. Schreiber got his tentacles around the innocent Mulroney and the devil then made him do it. Do it? Do what? What the hell did he do for $300,000?

That was the old Mulroney, the new one now speeds around on a flying carpet, representing Ogilvie Renault, as a partner at that Montreal law firm, doing business in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Mulroney is as thrilled with business opportunities in Saudi Arabia as Mr. Chretien is in the same with China. The thing of it is, China has only destroyed small business-production internationally with its cheaply-produced and sometimes lethal goods.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has exported Wahhabi-type Islamist jihad; both the reverie-type and the violent kind all over the world. Saudi Arabia has funded madrassas with its riches from petroleum resources everywhere it can, and that most certainly includes within Canada. It happens that al-Qaeda was inspired by the same kind of theocratic fundamentalism, even though its leaders abhor the House of Saud.

But according to Mr. Mulroney, in his Globe & Mail op-ed, this Middle East jihad-exporting country represents "a country with a dynamic economy that offers tremendous opportunities for our business and institutions", because both countries reflect a "shared commitment to innovation and education", and are "both poised for continued success", and share the values of "peace and security".

Sell out? Naw. Buy in.