Brian Mulroney, the man to beat

[a_majoor]

In the spirit of Christmas (or the "Holiday Season", if you prefer), I offer a five page .pdf article bound to cause an aneurysm in most left leaning people: the author contends Brian Mulroney is perhaps the best PM Canada ever had. Pleas don't comment unless you actually READ the paper and take in the metrics used to compare the various PM's and arrive at this conclusion.

http://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/foreward.pdf

 

[Trinity]

I thought it was to physicall beat...

Now I come into the thread and find out it's
about his political career. I feel cheated!

 

[STONEY]

Found the paper very interesting and the results surprising but I have to wonder if different parameters were used and numbers crunched would the results have turned out different. Second ,do the authors have an  agenda of there own, ie political. Thirdly I watched several football games lately that you could have added all the stats from the game and the wrong team won.  Garbage in= Garbage out.

Cheers

 

[a_majoor]

It seems Prime Minister Mulroney can still inspire passion in the electorate  >

In terms of objective measurements PM Mulroney is certainly well ahead of most of the competition. Few Prime Ministers have made such profound changes to Canada as NAFTA or replacing a hidden consumption tax with an open one, and since there are a great many different metrics being compared in this analysis, I don't think the authors are able to "cherry pick" the data the way they might with a simpler analysis such as the simple misery index of Inflation + Unemployment. Weightings could make a difference, but there is the entire paper to read to see what, if any, bias there is.

I think that these authors are correct for the most part, but like President Truman, a long period of historical reflection will have to take place before Mulroney's legacy can be fairly assessed. (For the record, Truman is praiseworthy for his foreign policy initiatives, including the Truman Doctrine of containment, while he is properly scorned for his attempts to impose a domestic command economy on the American people, which was frustrated by the Republican Congress).

 

[Edward Campbell]

Using the economic indicators they did there is no doubt: St Laurent and Mulroney tied for top spot; Trudeau and Chrétien at the bottom because they made a good (at least a 'not too bad')[/i] situation worse.[/i]

When you add more abstract indicators, policy initiatives, etc, then the gap widens between St Laurent and Mulroney, on top, and Trudeau and Chrétien, on the bottom.  The latter two did real, measurable political-strategic harm to Canada.  In my view, and largely because of the 1969 foreign policy White Paper, Trudeau sinks to the bottom as the worst prime minister in Canadian history – including Kim Campbell and Mackenzie Bowell.

On policy achievements (UN, NATO, St Lawrence Seaway – opening the Mid-West, Colombo Plan, etc) St Laurent rises well above Mulroney – the latter was, by comparison, timid.

On balance – St Laurent ranks waaaay up there with Sir John A. and Laurier – he was, in many respects, the maker of modern Canada; the remainder have just tinkered with his model.  Mulroney is just a step below that top tier.  Trudeau is in a pit all of his own.  Chrétien was a superb political operator but a lousy policy maker – being quite disinterested in the fate of the country.