THE SECRET MULRONEY TAPES: Peter C. Newman

The Secret Mulroney Tapes
By Peter C. Newman (Random House)

Thanks to the headlines splashed across the front pages this week by the bombshell launch of The Secret Mulroney Tapes, we now know a great deal of what Brian Mulroney was thinking while he was prime minister, and a lot of it isn't pretty. He freely slags both enemies and former allies and displays a pottymouth to shame a trailer-park boy. If this book were a TV show, it would be prefaced with a coarse-language warning. His predecessor, Pierre Trudeau, is defamed as a coward and a bully who nearly wrecked the country. His eventual successor, Jean Chretien, is branded a mean, dirty bastard. Former Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells is rated a son-of-a-bitch. He peddles the gossip that his immediate successor, Kim Campbell, blew the 1993 election that wiped out the Progressive Conservative Party because she spent too much conjugal time on the campaign trail with her boyfriend of the day. He brashly declares himself the best Canadian prime minister since founding father John A. Macdonald and occasionally muses that he might just be the greatest ever. He admits to mistakes, but for the most part it was a matter of trusting the wrong people. Lucien Bouchard most of all, and now, undoubtedly, Peter C. Newman. What the tapes leave you wondering is what he was thinking when he agreed to blab his darkest thoughts to Newman. In the most widely quoted excerpts, Mulroney comes off as a vindictive, ego-bloated vulgarian, hardly the stuff to bolster the legacy of a great statesman he craves more than anything in his latter years. But a full reading of the book reveals it as more than a hatchet job. Newman goes hard on Mulroney for reneging on his promise to clean the Ottawa stables of patronage, and for his isolation behind a wall of sycophants while in office. But he also depicts a Brian Mulroney that his friends well know, but which eluded most Canadians: a charming, gracious, humorous and loyal individual. He brings out the strength of Mulroney's conviction that the failed Meech Lake constitutional project would be a landmark of Canadian unity, and the depth of his sorrow over Bouchard's defection to the separatists at the height of the Meech ratification showdown. Even hardline Mulroney-haters could sympathize with his eloquent take on the episode: "I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit." In his conclusion, he praises Mulroney as a pivotal figure in Canadian history, if not the best prime minister ever, then certainly an activist national leader courageously given to bold initiatives, like the free-trade agreement and the goods and services tax, that positioned the country for entry into the 21st century.

The book is enhanced by further interviews, some as brutally frank, with dozens of Mulroney intimates and contemporaries. Former Ontario premier David Peterson calls him a pathological liar. Mila Mulroney disses Trudeau as "this short little ugly man." The book is unlikely to change many opinions of Mulroney. The many who still loathe him a dozen years out of office will have their judgment reinforced. His friends and supporters will not be surprised -- it was no secret that he was obsessed with Trudeau, despised Chretien and Clyde Wells, cussed like a sailor in private and held himself in overweening esteem. The Secret Mulroney Tapes is a remarkable book, no matter what anyone thinks of its subject. Never before has a prime minister gone on record so openly and bluntly, whether or not Mulroney intended to come across as he did. It makes for a gripping read, and not just for political junkies.  Reviewer: Huby Bauch