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Three takes on
the great Canadian roller-coaster ride: Politics
National Post
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Weekend Post
Adam Daifallah
Right Side Up
By Paul Wells
Douglas Gibson Books
336 pp., $34.99
Full Circle
By Bob Plamondon
Key Porter
472 pp., $36.95
The Long Road Back
By Hugh Segal
Harper Collins Canada
252 pp., $34.95
Think back, if you
can, to the summer of 2002. Stephen Harper had just been elected
leader of the Canadian Alliance, Joe Clark was presiding over
a caucus of a dozen Progressive Conservative MPs (and considering
staying on for another election as leader) and the wildly
popular finance minister, Paul Martin, was the heir apparent
of the Liberal leadership and, the pundits predicted, would
cruise to a 200- seat majority. Three recent books chronicle
the events that have brought us to our remarkably different
political landscape.
Bob Plamondon's Full
Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics
is a behind-the-scenes expose of how the Right united and
the Conservatives climbed back to power. It is chock full
of insider information that will be devoured by political
junkies of all stripes.
The book's main focus
is the Alliance-PC merger, but Plamondon, an Ottawa policy
consultant and a long-time Tory activist, also includes an
interesting section on the rise and fall of the Mulroney coalition,
though it could be said that too much blame for the PC decline
is laid at the feet of Preston Manning for creating the Reform
Party, while Lucien Bouchard -- whose Bloc Quebecois was equally
guilty of splitting the Conservatives -- is virtually ignored.
Most revealing is the
examination of Peter MacKay's victory in the 2003 PC leadership
race and the events leading to the creation of the new party.
We're offered titillating details about the backroom decision-making
process, in particular the strange story of MacKay's infamous
deal with David Orchard to ensure his final ballot victory.
Therein lies a flaw,
however; like most insider stories, the author gives more
weight to the accounts of some over those of others. In Plamondon's
case it is clear he had much better access to the MacKay-PC
side of the merger story than the Harper- Alliance side. That
is fine so long as readers are aware of it.
Hugh Segal tackles
some of the same issues, but from a firstperson perspective,
in The Long Road Back: The Conservative Journey, 1993-2006.
Segal, one of the few senators appointed during Paul Martin's
short term as prime minister, is the consummate Conservative
insider, with four decades of institutional knowledge to share.
Few have a greater understanding of the party's inner workings,
and it shows in this eminently readable book brimming with
the wit and modesty that have earned Segal his moniker as
the Tory party's "happy warrior."
Segal's perspective
is particularly interesting given his own political journey:
A proud self described Red To ry, at one time he was unenthusiastic
about the idea of a union between his party and Reform/Alliance.
Over time, however, he came to embrace the single-party movement
and is now a trusted advisor to the Prime Minister.
Reading this book,
one gets the sense, though, that Segal may be holding back
a bit. He is a loyal partisan, after all. But there are enough
candid observations to keep things interesting, and Segal
offers frank opinions on a cross-section of modern political
figures, from Belinda Stronach and Jean Charest to Pierre
Trudeau and Joe Clark.
Readers who prefer
a nonpartisan take on current events might prefer Paul Wells's
Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen
Harper's New Conservatism. As the subtitle suggests, Wells,
a columnist at Maclean's, juxtaposes Harper's ascension to
power against Martin's precipitous collapse, alternating chapter
to chapter from the story of the Liberals to the Conservatives.
Like the other books, Wells covers the unite-the-Right story
but digs deeper to explore the personalities of Harper and
Martin as well as other key players in the drama.
Right Side Up puts meat on the bones
of Wells's columns over the past few years and his widely
read blog. His main point: that Martin was a directionless,
irreparably flawed leader beholden to a group of overzealous
advisors, and that Harper is a tough, frequently underestimated
Machiavellian personality who has matured greatly and learned
hard lessons from past mistakes.
Interestingly, Wells
admits to starting out as a fan of Martin's; he even considered
working for him. But while most Hill reporters were still
fawning over him in the late 1990s, Wells had already registered
Martin's lack of conviction and become one of his earliest
critics. This is the first Martin book I've seen that attempts
to explain one of the strangest political stories in recent
memory: how and why it was that Martin, a man who spent most
of his life preparing for 24 Sussex Drive, had no clue what
to do once he got there. We also learn of the soul-searching
and rebuilding processes Harper went through between his 2004
election loss and the winning campaign of 2006, an exercise
that went largely unreported.
Wells is lucid, funny,
revealing, opinionated and sometimes wickedly snarky. ("[Jean]
Lapierre became Martin's chief Quebec organizer Ã
Because he was just so freaking great.")With a few exceptions,
he in fact seems to like the people he's writing about, and
his book is devoid of the base cynicism one sees in so much
political reporting today.
Overall, these three
books complement each other nicely. Each makes a helpful contribution
to the history of one of the most fascinating periods in Canadian
politics in a long time.
- Adam Daifallah
is co-author of Rescuing Canada's Right (John Wiley
& Sons).
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