Frank McKennaJIM YOUNG/Reuters
Frank McKenna would make an excellent prime minister of Canada. He is not going to be prime minister of Canada. Harvey Sawler's book tells us a very great deal about why both of these statements are true, as well as about why McKenna is an honourable and impressive man and why Canadian politics is broken.
Unfortunately, the book itself doesn't do a terribly good job of telling McKenna's compelling story; the writing is uneven, the choice of topics to emphasize is idiosyncratic and it generally has the feel of a book written in a hurry to capitalize on the attention properly being paid to its subject. Still, without too much effort, one can piece together from Sawler's narrative Frank McKenna's real meaning to Canadian politics.
Many Canadians wish McKenna would take a run at the top job, especially as Michael Ignatieff continues to disappoint and Stephen Harper's grip tightens on 24 Sussex Dr. Most of these people are Liberals who, like all competitive people, believe that they deserve to win top honours in every contest. Recent elections have therefore been incomprehensible to them.
For the people pressing McKenna, a highly successful former New Brunswick premier and Canada's former ambassador to the United States, to lead their party, he is just a means to an end. As one senior Liberal said to me wistfully just the other day while discussing the party's electoral prospects, "If only Frank were leader …" For those who see only the game of politics, McKenna is somehow, inexplicably, refusing to do the right thing. The right thing in this case, of course, is to sacrifice himself so that the party can enjoy power.
McKenna's not interested. That makes him a rare bird indeed: a former political junkie who has transcended the game of politics. But, like all reformed addicts, he makes those still trapped under the heel of their addiction writhe with self-loathing. They cannot imagine that there is any escape from politics except through irremediable defeat. A man who can stare down the prospect of serious political power and walk away is somehow an affront to the natural order of things, a reproachful reminder to guilty consciences that all the alleged "sacrifices" made for political life, the broken families, estranged children, sleepless nights, loss of privacy, and so forth are in fact not sacrifices at all; they are an ego trip for people convinced that their country needs them and that politics is the only way to serve people. Frank McKenna knows better.
It should have come through loud and clear from McKenna's past behaviour that he is not in the market. While at the height of his power and influence, he simply turned himself off as premier of New Brunswick, honouring a promise he made years earlier to serve 10 years as premier and no more. After a long period in the private sector, where he failed to find his real vocation, he was almost tempted back into the political fray by Paul Martin, who tried hard to recruit him to be one of his most senior ministers. McKenna, who could have had almost any seat he wanted, would serve only if he could represent Moncton. When the sitting MP refused to step aside, McKenna declined to pursue the opportunity further.
A few years later, Stephen Harper put an end to Martin's political career, and by ricochet, McKenna's short-lived term as our ambassador to Washington. The political vultures descended in a cloud on the man and demanded that he take up the mantle of Liberal leadership. In his gracious message declining the invitations pressed upon him from many quarters, he wrote, "Contrary to the belief of some, being prime minister of Canada has not been a burning ambition for me. … I love my country and would do anything for it, but I am not vain enough to believe that I alone can provide the leadership that our great country and party need at this time."
Two years later, after Stéphane Dion was unceremoniously bundled out the door after the coalition debacle, the pressure on McKenna to offer to stand was again enormous. But with each offering, Sawler shows, McKenna has become clearer that he doesn't want it. In 2008, without fanfare and before the Draft McKenna campaign had gathered much steam, he issued a one-paragraph statement that concluded: "The challenge of winning the leadership, restoring the health of the Liberal Party and returning a Liberal majority government requires a longer time commitment than I am prepared to make. There will be an ample number of well-qualified candidates to do this important work."
McKenna's repeated refusals leave hyper-partisans perplexed and disappointed. But they don't understand their man. He has little patience for game-playing, for what he called the "unrelenting negativity" of Canadian politics and the "loss of respect and reputation" that entering the political arena requires. No one is more ready to serve his country, but what he discovered as ambassador to our most important partner and ally is that real power doesn't come from elected office, but from inside yourself. Sawler senses this moral to the McKenna story, but somehow never quite manages to crystallize it for the reader.
What the book shows very successfully, by contrast, is that McKenna has a passion for Canada, for getting things done, and a genuine desire to help individual people. Increasingly, he doesn't care about party and dreads the politically correct quagmire of partisan politics with its narrow focus on petty issues. He moves now on the world stage, where other international statesmen recognize in him one of their own. The indefatigable Canada-booster has discovered that his personal qualities can also be put in the service of the world's poorest, as in Haiti; he has found both his centre and his vocation. We should all be so lucky.
Brian Lee Crowley, a long-time Frank McKenna watcher, is managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a public-policy think tank in Ottawa.