Lyin' Brian

Dick is back from his spring tour of the Tropic of Torpor.

What is there left to say about Myron Bullroney? Anyone harbouring a shred of sympathy for this pompous, venal gladhander should take the time to read Andrew Coyne's take-down of him in Maclean's magazine, (normally not a publication I'm drawn to, since one would have to come across the sneering "what the fuck are you looking at, asshole?" gaze of the loathsome Mark Steyn). Coyne has been on the Mulroney-Schreiber case like a bloodhound, and his eviscerations of the greasy former PM should finally put to rest any questions as to whether he has, as he would have it, been unfairly pilloried in the court of public reckoning. Mulroney's performance at the Oliphant inquiry, the one he demanded from Stephen Harper so he could rescue his "good name" from the blizzard of allegations that he basically took kickback money from the Airbus affair, was a case study in maudlin self-pity. What is amazing is that he could have believed he would emerge from an examination of his relationship with such a low-life as Schreiber with an intact reputation.

As Coyne devastatingly shows, at the end of this sordid affair, Mulroney has still never answered head on the question of why he took this cash.

There may have been a time when having a whiskey tenor could open doors for the congenital bullshitter, but the Oliphant performance showed clearly that this time is past. In the end "I, Martin Brian Mulroney," who pledged to show up at the inquiry "with bells on," emerged looking like a clown.

This is a pity in some sense. Canadians who saw him every day and tired of his schtick might be inclined not to recall that Mulroney did Canada proud on a number of international files, most especially his leadership in helping rally the world community to the unfolding catastrophe in Ethiopia in 1984, and in his steadfast refusal to join with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in blocking action against the apartheid regime in South Africa. That he would sully this record with the spectacle of taking cash in envelopes from a shady professional palm greaser will continue to puzzle, since he never gave a coherent account of it when he had the stage to himself.