[BRIEF NOTE] Oh, Brian

[rfmcdonald]

Brian Mulroney, the Canadian who ended his term as prime minister with single-digit percentage approval ratings and a ruined Progressive Conservative party, is back in the news thanks to a new book by Peter C. Newman.

The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Confessions of a Prime Minister details hours of interviews with Mulroney, his family and friends and quotes Mulroney as saying he was the best prime minister since Sir John A. Macdonald.

The book, which hits stores later this month, has been a closely guarded secret. Neither its author nor the subject matter were revealed before now as Toronto-based publisher Random House feared a possible court injunction.

Now, however, some of those taped conversations have been made public -- revealing the former prime minister's indiscreet, but true feelings for many of his contemporaries.

[. . .]

In the pages of Newman's book, Mulroney lashes out at friend and foe alike. For example, Mulroney thrashed Liberal Prime Minister John Turner in 1984, but his real rivalry was with Trudeau, who was prime minister from 1968 to 1979, and then 1980 to 1984.

In the book, Mulroney is convinced Trudeau was behind the undermining of the Meech Lake Accord.

Trudeau's motivation, according to Mulroney, was that "he didn't want anybody to succeed where he had failed.

"Trudeau's contribution was not to build Canada but to destroy it, and I had to come in and save it."

Trudeau repatriated the Constitution in 1982, but failed to secure the signature of Quebec, which was then led by Parti Quebecois Premier Rene Levesque.

Mulroney describes Meech as "the sweetest deal ever known to man and it was thrown away."

Newman noted that some of Mulroney's dislike for Trudeau was personal, noting it likely stemmed from Trudeau's wealthy upbringing versus Mulroney's working-class roots in a Quebec mill town.

The book shows Mulroney seething after his lifelong friend Lucien Bouchard departs to lead the fight for Quebec separation following the failure of the Meech Lake Accord.

"I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit," Mulroney is quoted as saying.

Mulroney is quoted as describing his short-lived successor, Kim Campbell, as a "very vain person who blew the 1993 election because she was too busy screwing around with her Russian boyfriend" resulting in "the most incompetent campaign I've seen in my life."

A dozen years after he left office, and he's still the same ol' lyin' Brian. We were missing that, I think.