The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister [Hardcover]

Peter C. Newman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0679313516 | ISBN-13: 978-0679313519 | Edition: First Edition, First Printing

The Secret Mulroney Tapes is an outrageous and intimate portrait of a Canadian prime minister, as told in his own words. There has never been a political book like this, and there will almost certainly never be another.

Peter C. Newman, the author of books about John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, as well as 2004’s number-one bestselling memoir, Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power, has done it again. He has written twenty-two books that have sold two million copies, and earned him the title of Canada’s “most cussed and discussed” political commentator. Here, his no-holds-barred profile of Canada’s most controversial – and most reviled – prime minister breaks new ground.

Compiled from years of candid, taped conversations with Mulroney and the people closest to him while he was in power, the sometimes uproarious and often disturbing interviews – 7,400 pages of transcripts totalling 1.8 million words – have been sealed until now. Stunningly indiscreet and savagely frank, Mulroney is the first prime minister to be so nakedly outspoken. Yet he is also revealed as a witty Irish charmer, ready with a quick line to raise a laugh, no matter how impudent or profane, a man as warm in private as he was defensive in the public eye.

Mulroney names the names and spills the beans about what really goes on in Ottawa, which he describes as a “sick” city that runs on “goddamned incest”: “They’re all married to one another. They’re shacked up with one another. Their wives are on the payroll of the CBC. It’s just awful.” Lucien Bouchard, his one-time soulmate, he calls “bitter and profane” and “extraordinarily vain.” He writes off his constitutional foe, former Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, as an “unprincipled son of a bitch.” His disgust for the press is as monumental as his sense of being misunderstood, and in his eyes the Ottawa press corps are “a phony bunch of bastards” who don’t give him credit even when the world applauds him for being “one of the three men who played the most important role in the collapse of the Berlin Wall.”

Out of The Secret Mulroney Tapes emerges a startling picture of the politician whose reign shocked and appalled and yet also revolutionized this country. No other prime minister in Canadian history aroused a stronger emotional response than Brian Mulroney. This book provides Canadians with a unique insight into the bold politician who changed their country like no other.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter C. Newman has been writing about Canadian politics for nearly half a century, including books on prime ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. His Renegade in Power (1963) revolutionized Canadian political reporting with its controversial “insiders-tell-all” approach. Four decades later, Newman has done it again, with his ultimate insider book, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister.

The author of twenty-two books that have sold two million copies, Newman has won a half dozen of the country’s most illustrious literary awards, including the Drainie-Taylor Biography prize for his 2004 memoir, Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power. A former editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star and Maclean’s, Newman has been honoured with a National Newspaper Award, has been elected to the News Hall of Fame, and has earned the informal title of Canada’s “most cussed and discussed” political commentator.

His first-hand profile of Brian Mulroney is based on seventeen years of frank and intimate discussions with the country’s most controversial, and reviled, prime minister. Before they began, Mulroney told Newman he didn’t want a “puff job.” He didn’t get one.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Mulroney Unplugged

What a bizarre phenomenon he was,
this backwoods combination of
Machiavelli, leprechaun and Dr. Phil.

The phone rang at an awkward moment, which turned embarrassing when my wife walked into our living room and declared, “It’s the prime minister. He wants to speak to you.”

Her announcement was met with jeers from our neighbours, gathered for a pre-Christmas tipple in 1986 at our seaside house, cantilevered over a cliff, facing Haro Strait on Canada’s extreme western edge. Across the water I could spot the shores of San Juan Island and the American flag being whipped by the winter wind.

“Why would ‘Lyin’ Brian’ be phoning you?” asked Ross, our immediate neighbour. “Maybe he wants advice on when to quit. I can tell him: Yesterday!” Frank, the retired English gentleman who helped with our garden, and several others chimed in, making it very clear that none of these hardy and practical west coasters believed for a minute that anyone in Cordova Bay, the tiny village nestled into a notch on the coast of Vancouver Island where we lived, would be likely to receive a call from a prime minister–even Brian Mulroney, whose reputation ranked just below that of the harbour seals that fouled local fish nets.

I picked up the phone in the kitchen to hear that resonant, rain-barrel voice of his ask, “Where are you, Peter?” This was his standard opening ploy. While the PMO switchboard could always locate me, he never knew if I was in a suitable place for one of his rants about “those myopic, incestuous bastards” in the Ottawa press gallery, or the latest perfidy by “that asshole” Pierre Trudeau.

“I’m at home,” I replied, “entertaining the neighbours . . .”

“Lookit, I just wanted to tell you something.” He sounded unusually subdued. “We recently celebrated my mother’s seventieth birthday and she cooked asparagus flavoured with bread crumbs melted in butter. When I asked where she got the recipe, she said, ‘from Peter Newman’s mother.’ We really enjoyed it. I thought you’d want to know.”

He bid me a gentle Merry Christmas and hung up. It was nearly Silent Night, Holy Night, and the Big Guy was feeling mellow.

The call was a typical grace note from a man I had known and admired for twenty-five years, a man who had never failed to honour the appropriate occasion. My mother, the last and closest member of my family, had recently suffered a prolonged and tormenting death from cancer. She had enjoyed meeting the Mulroneys many years earlier when she and Brian’s mother were both visiting Ottawa, where I then lived. Now he was subtly acknowledging the agony of my mother’s passing, and how much I must be missing her.

Such compassionate gestures were one source of his power. His entourage, which consisted of his chums from St. Francis Xavier University and the Laval law school, had learned to appreciate this side of the man. It wasn’t just for show. Those of us who were beneficiaries of his generous sentiments and frequent phone calls could never figure out how he made time to govern the second biggest nation on Earth without forgetting our birthdays, wedding anniversaries and deaths in the families.

Now I had a problem. How could I explain to my expectant guests that the prime minister of the second largest nation on Earth was calling me ostensibly because he had enjoyed my mother’s asparagus recipe?

As I walked back into the living room, looking as if I had just kissed the Pope’s ring, my guests began shouting: “So, what did he want? Is he lonely? Hope you didn’t tell him about that marijuana stash up on Dover Street!”

I silenced them with a wink. “If you must know,” I confided, “I advised him to invade Zimbabwe.”

It had been a typical Mulroney moment.



He bugs us still. During the Mulroney years, most Canadians stopped being languid spectators of the Ottawa minstrel show. Instead, the country’s benign burghers, mobilized by their loathing for the blarneyed smoothie who occupied the nation’s highest elected office, turned federal politics into a killing field. What was it, exactly, that prompted such visceral contempt for this down-to-earth politician with charm to burn and the guts to tackle some of the country’s toughest problems? Even now, almost a generation later, it remains a puzzle, in the same league as trying to figure out why Japanese kamikaze pilots wore safety helmets or how wild deer manage to read those DEER CROSSING signs on country roads.

Perhaps the suicide pilots wanted to keep the hair out of their eyes, and probably the deer just follow their cousins’ spoor, but the Mulroney mystery demands a better explanation. This book attempts to provide it through his unfiltered thoughts and uncensored words. By reviving the echoes of his presence in this unplugged, informal, one-on-one format, I hope to resolve the riddle–to trace his mutation from the genial poster boy of U-turn politics into a reform-minded statesman who became a high-stakes player, rolled the dice and lost.

Mulroney’s time in office was a harsh, unsettling decade. No journalistic formula can convey the sheer velocity of events, the patterns of response and denial that shaped the stewardship of the rowdy Irishman who headed Canada’s federal government for most of ten crucial years. It was a time of few heroes, yet there was no shortage of heroic confrontations, providing some of the most hair-raising clashes in Canada’s generally tepid political history. But instead of emerging from these pivotal encounters with victor’s laurels, Mulroney seemed diminished by them.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Random House Canada; First Edition, First Printing edition (September 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679313516
• ISBN-13: 978-0679313519
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #423,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How 'Lyin' Brian' destroyed the Conservatives in Canada, November 16, 2005

By 

Theodore A. Rushton (PHOENIX, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister (Hardcover)

If Brian Mulroney has any sense of gratitude at all, he will profusely thank Peter Newman for the bad language in this book because it will deftly divert public attention from Mulroney's amazing ineptitude.

"I've been manoeuvering this thing for two years, to be succeeded by Campbell," Mulroney said of Kim Campbell, who led the Conservatives from 169 seats in Parliament to 2 in the 1993 election. That, more than any four letter words, is the absolute worst language in the book. It shows Mulroney's total incompetence as a leader, and may well seal his fate as the worst prime minister in Canadian history.

Politics is all about how you treat other people.

Mulroney knew Campbell was incompetent but said she would improve because, "If you're smart, you'll grow into it. Some prime ministers have not. Dief, I think it's fair to say, did not. Dief was too old."

Well, I lived in Canada when Dief was prime minister. I voted for Dief. I agonized over his indecisions. But I don't remember The Chief leading the Conservatives from 169 seats in parliament to 2. I do remember Dief fought for his vision of Canada until the day he died. Dief never walked away from the land he loved.

Dief was indomitable. Mulroney was inept. Political biography is less about "great deeds" than the personality to succeed or fail.

The personal image of Mulroney in this book is that of someone with less rapport than a McDonald's clerk who dismisses a customer with the mandatory "thank-you-have-a-nice-day-come-again" mantra while walking away from the counter. Mulroney knew all the right words, but I couldn't find any sense of empathy. There was no inner passion about doing what is best for Canada. It's a "Me-Me-Me Generation" book about a man who seems utterly befuddled to learn that no one likes him as much as he loves himself.

Reading it reminds me of the interminable accounts of the last days of Hitler or Hussein, trapped in an underground bunker with no chance of escape. However, there's two differences: Hitler knew the end was near, and everyone was trying to escape. Mulroney, in comparison, seems clueless.

It's shattering, because I like a lot of things Mulroney tried and on occasion did, such as Meech Lake and NAFTA. His assessments of Trudeau and Chretien are right on the mark; but, as incisive as he is in assessing his antagonists, he was incapable of understanding his own strengths, weaknesses, foibles and faults.

It's rare that any journalist gets such a penetrating insight to the character of a politician. Newman had a choice of saying Mulroney was an insensitive clod with less personal charm than a dead codfish, or letting Mulroney say it in his own words. He chose the wiser course of just quoting Mulroney justly. After all, there's an old saying in politics, "Never murder a man who's committing suicide."

In Mulroney's own words, this book depicts a political career as a fatal plunge into the Politics of Me which produced the mass suicide of the Conservative Party. Mulroney made Jean Chretien look good enough to be prime minister, and Canada may never recover.