They are nothing alike but politically inseparable.
Stephen Harper, the 6th longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history, had the job for nine years and 271 days.
Brian Mulroney, the 7th longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history, occupied the country's top political job for eight years and 281 days.
Mulroney loves and has always loved the spotlight and enjoys the company of people. Harper, as John Ibbitson writes in his latest book, may have the personality least suited to the job of any PM in history. When asked why he doesn't seem to like people, Harper is said to have responded, “I like people. I just don't like the people you like.”
On the scorecard, they have both secured their places in history. Mulroney won the most seats ever: 211 of them in 1984. He was the first Conservative PM to win back-to-back majority governments since Sir John A. Macdonald in 1891.
Harper is the only prime minister in Canadian history to win a majority government after winning two consecutive minorities. He led his party into electoral battle five times; Pierre Trudeau was the last leader to do that. And, of course, his greatest contribution to making the conservative movement electorally competitive again was by putting enough water into his Canadian Alliance wine to enable the two conservative parties to merge in 2003. He then won the leadership of the new Conservative Party of Canada in 2004, and was PM by 2006. Not a bad legacy.
Last week was a fascinating one for these two former prime ministers. The contrast was harsh, and in some respects, heart-breaking for the man just departing 24 Sussex Drive. On Wednesday, Justin Trudeau was swearing in his first cabinet to adoring applause from thousands who'd gathered on the lawn at Rideau Hall. The weather was a perfect manifestation of the “sunny ways” he now trumpets.
However, the next day, Stephen Harper was sneaking in the back entrance of Parliament, using a freight elevator to attend his final caucus meeting as Conservative Party leader. The online newsletter Blacklock's Reporter seemed to be the only media present to snap pictures of the moment — a moment Harper clearly didn't want preserved for posterity.
That evening, Tory supporters packed a ballroom at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel to listen to a speech from someone who's been out of public life for more than two decades. And Brian Mulroney didn't disappoint. Even at age 76 and suffering from diabetes, Mulroney is still one of the best stump speakers ever, reminding the faithful that “this is the time to heal old wounds, not to settle old scores.” In terms of optics, what a contrast: Harper's back-door entry into Parliament, while Mulroney was basking in respect and adoration from a packed hall, and plenty of coverage to follow in the media.
It was also a particularly poignant message coming from Mulroney, since he surely has many “old scores” he'd like to settle with the outgoing prime minister. Mulroney is no doubt still stinging from Harper's one-time edict that no one in the Conservative government ought to have any contact with the party's most successful leader in more than a century, because of the Karlheinz Schreiber controversy. That one hurt.
If I needed a hint of the antipathy between these two figures, it came during an interview I did with Mulroney in early 2011. With the May 2 election looming, I casually asked “You’re voting for Mr. Harper, I assume,” to which Mulroney responded, “At this point, I'll vote for the Conservative candidate in my constituency.” The way he said it, with his mouth tightly pursed, left no doubt in my mind that there was a vast distinction between voting for his local candidate and his national party leader.
Had Harper managed to win the just-completed 2015 election, it would have started a grand debate among historians as to which Conservative party leader left a more powerful legacy. A Harper “four-peat” would have allowed him to retire gracefully from the PMO, rather than being shown the door by the electorate. But it was not to be.
Conversely, Mulroney's place in the history books is surely secure, having brought the country its first Free Trade Agreement with the United States in 1988, implemented the goods and services tax, and led in the fight to eliminate apartheid in South Africa. A 2006 survey declared him the greenest prime minister in Canadian history. He made the first significant attempt at deficit reduction since Joe Clark's ill-fated budget in 1979, and although he ultimately failed, he almost successfully secured Quebec's signature on a renewed constitutional agreement, first with the Meech Lake accord, then the Charlottetown accord.
Mulroney's approach was to go big or go home and ultimately he did both. He wanted popularity and grand accomplishments when first elected, and at some point realized he couldn't have both. He opted for the big agenda, and got much of it done, which cost him his popularity big time. By the time he left office in 1993, he was reviled by many. But over the years, his political resurrection, despite the Schreiber mess, has happened and there is surely a greater appreciation for his accomplishments with the passage of time.
Harper's approach has been so different. Perhaps influenced by Mulroney's fate, he opted, in baseball parlance, to play “small ball,” rarely swinging for the fences. Perhaps he felt he could avoid the big loss Mulroney's successor, Kim Campbell, sustained in 1993 by aiming low. In some respects, he has avoided that electoral debacle. Although Harper lost, he still managed to win nearly 32 per cent of the votes, good for 99 seats and a solid opposition in place.
Mulroney gave us massive tax reform — the GST. Harper cut it by two points — an approach opposed by essentially every economist in the country except one: Harper himself. That decision made our deficits so much bigger than they needed to be and put significantly more unnecessary debt on the backs of future generations. However, he might not have won that 2006 election without that high profile tax cut promise.
In addition, rather than a grand approach to tax policy, Harper opted for small, boutique tax cuts designed to find favour with particular niches of the electorate. One wonders how many of those cuts will survive the new Trudeau government. No one wonders whether the GST will survive. As Mulroney once told me, “Every finance minister in Canada would be up a tree without it.”
Where Mulroney put a premium on good relations with the United States, and had them, Harper's relationship with President Barack Obama was simply not good. When Mulroney wanted progress on acid rain, he called President Ronald Reagan, who then told his staff to get it done. “I think we should do something for Brian,” Reagan ordered. Harper's “acid rain,” the Keystone XL pipeline, conversely, never found favour with Obama, who just last week killed it. Clearly, Obama never felt a need to do something for Stephen.
Harper surely had more economically challenging times in which to govern. While Mulroney had to act to restore confidence in Canada’s financial system when two western banks collapsed in 1985, Harper was faced with the potentially cataclysmic meltdown of the world's entire financial architecture, plus the Great Recession, and by most accounts, managed that crisis well. He purchased parts of two major car companies to keep them afloat and engaged in massive deficit spending, two things that you know were not part of his DNA. But he did them.
In some respects, it's a little unfair to compare the records of Mulroney, who's been out of office for 22 years, and Harper, who's been out for five days.
Presumably, Harper's record will get a thorough re-think over the years, as historians go in for a second, third, and fourth look at 2006-2015.
But at the moment, the winds of history clearly favour Mulroney: he got big things done, never lost an election, and despite his numerous foibles, arguably enjoys the admiration and respect of many more Canadians than Stephen Harper does today.
But let's talk in two decades. Maybe that too will change. Maybe Stephen Harper will enjoy a political resurrection and a happier third act.
Image credit: Facebook/RtHonStephenHarper; TVO
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