The media buzz has started about Brian Mulroney's memoirs, which are set to be released Sept. 10. The coverage of the memoirs' and their content will be quite interesting to observe as it will serve as a good indicator as to whether the media has finally warmed to Mulroney 15 years after he left office. They never gave him a fair shake when he was in power and haven't treated him all that well since, although public perception of him has improved immensely in the last five years. Canadians have begun to re-evaluate the legacy of the man who was our last Big Ideas Prime Minister. He revamped the tax system, attempted constitutional reconciliation, privatized Crown Corporations, fought South African Apartheid, negotiated the Acid Rain Treaty, supported the liberation of Kuwait and much more.
It seems that those leaders who are supposedly "reviled" when they leave office tend to be those most appreciated in the history books. Two notable examples are Churchill and Harry Truman. I think Mulroney will join the group and I wouldn't even be surprised if George W. Bush does too.
The opening paragraph of this CBC story on the memoirs caught my eye:
He's been skewered by an old friend in The Secret Mulroney Tapes and had his political legacy assessed by assorted biographers, but now former prime minister Brian Mulroney is about to tell his own story.
Actually, no. His political legacy has not been assessed by any biographers because there haven't been any legacy-assessing biographies. The Secret Mulroney Tapes was not a biography: it was a bunch of slapped-together interview transcripts. Previous Mulroney books such as L. Ian MacDonald's Mulroney: The Making of a Prime Minister and John Sawatsky's The Politics of Ambition were written during his time in office. There has not been a single serious biography written yet on Mulroney's time in power or his legacy and we are long overdue for one. It's astounding, really, that no political journalist or author has taken up the challenge.
Hmmm. If this law career doesn't work out ...
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 8:29 PM
