Politic?

Oozing Supercilious Sleaze

"Prime ministers are not chosen to seek popularity, they are chosen to provide leadership. Leadership is the process, not only of foreseeing the need for change but making the case for change. Leadership does not consist of imposing unpopular ideas on the public but of making unpopular ideas acceptable to the nation."
"Popularity is bad for you. I try to avoid it like the plague and I've been reasonably successful."
"A negative verdict by the U.S. government would contravene a major tenet of [the North American Free Trade Agreement] under which the U.S. was guaranteed unfettered supply in exchange for unfettered access by Canadian exporters to its market."
Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney

Well, he's right there. He was eminently successful, in fact, in 'avoiding' popularity. Except that it wasn't he who avoided it; he would have loved to have attained its rare air. Popular appeal avoided him, with a vengeance. His very voice was enough to make people wince in the misery of knowing they would be compelled to hear it again and again, before he faded into history. He's done a fairly good job of fading, returning occasionally to remind the public of what they gained when he left.

He long ago cornered the market on greed and hypocrisy. He need never have concerned himself over being burdened by popular opinion in his court. He was quickly enough recognized as a self-serving, mendacious man, capable of grovelling when it suited his purpose in courting someone he recognized as having more power than he had, and alternately imposing himself into situations that might personally benefit him.

Above all, it was his smarmy persona that ground people into a rage of visceral dislike for the man. "Popularity is bad for you"? He earned his lack of popularity. But he does very much resent the fact that he has never attained the honourable and respectable status of Elder Statesman, the man to whom his successor, the current Prime Minister, might look up to for advice and the advantage of his broad experience at the helm of government for - oh, much, much too long.

Speaking before the Canada 2020 dinner last week, the "next big thing" for Canada was his topic; oil, gas, mineral resources. The audience, it would seem, was mesmerized neither by his message nor by the prospect of Canada gaining additional wealth by the considered exploitation of its considerable natural resources. Mostly, those natural resources that ventured beyond Canada's traditional ones; the energy resources for which we are consumed with guilt in their effects on environmental degradation.

And the inescapable fact that until other reliable, utilitarian energy sources can be established less inimical to the environment, we will remain dependent on fossil fuels. And, that being the case, there is a need to transport both the crude and the refined product to market. Which brings us to the controversial oil and gas pipelines, the prospect of which brings shudders of disgust to committed environmentalists, and gives pause to puzzled but concerned citizens.

Most of whom do know, though, that pipelines are safer conveyances of volatile substances than rail lines. Which are not only susceptible to catastrophic accidents, but which are unprepared in the use of old rolling stock to safely convey those products in any case. And which, in their conveyance distract from the equally, if not far more important task of moving prairie grains to market. So, Canada, we have a problem, do we not?

"The Canadian energy and resource agenda under the prime minister's personal direction would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in new investments, millions of new jobs, bring West and East closer together and be as transformational and beneficial to the country as any major policy initiative undertaken in Canada in the last 70 years", said the putative Elder Statesman, to his (grudging) credit. While inferring in his estimable opinion he would have done a far better job of all of this than the incumbent.

Well, Brian Mulroney conferred with and enjoyed the confidence of one of his own, Ronald Reagan. Their Irish eyes blinked companionably at one another. They shared an ideological agenda, and Mr. Mulroney had less trouble convincing President Reagan of the usefulness in two nations sharing a contiguous border of the efficacy of working in tandem, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has in persuading a socialist-leaning, environmentally-sensitive President Barack Obama that trade agreements trump hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy being that the United States is responsible for burning far more carbon dioxide emissions in its expansive use of low-quality coal deposits by far, than the Alberta oil sands will impose on the environment. But President Obama can appease part of his electorate by pushing back at foreign investment in energy resources, and bypassing the reality of home-grown environmental despoilation.

And in the process of compellingly advancing the agenda for Canada's energy future, Mr. Mulroney inferred that there would have been no problem if he were still steering Canada's foreign relations, whereas, unfortunately, an inferior quality now holds that position, someone who would never stoop so low as did Brian Mulroney in pocketing hundreds of thousands in cash bribes from Karlheinz Schreiber, that Mulroney-sleazy munitions lobbyist.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's distaste for such gratuitously wretched ethics displayed in a distancing from the almost-forgotten Elder Statesman that will never be forgiven by the man who, when leaving 24 Sussex Drive, attempted to persuade Public Works to buy back the furniture used to furnish the place.