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The best PM we’ll never have 

The Daily Review, Thu., Feb. 11

Frank McKenna REUTERS

 Frank McKenna is a rare bird: a politician who has transcended the game of politics

By Brian Lee Crowley

Frank McKenna would make an excellent prime minister of Canada. He is not going to be primeminister of Canada. Harvey Sawler’s book tells us a very great deal about why both of thesestatements are true, as well as about why McKenna is an honourable and impressive man andwhy Canadian politics is broken.

Unfortunately, the book itself doesn’t do a terribly good job of telling McKenna’s compellingstory; 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 itssubject. 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 honoursin every contest. Recent elections have therefore been incomprehensible to them.

For the people pressing McKenna, a highly successful former New Brunswick premier andCanada’s former ambassador to the United States, to lead their party, he is just a means to anend. As one senior Liberal said to me wistfully just the other day while discussing the party’selectoral 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 hastranscended the game of politics. But, like all reformed addicts, he makes those still trappedunder the heel of their addiction writhe with self-loathing. They cannot imagine that there is anyescape from politics except through irremediable defeat. A man who can stare down the prospectof serious political power and walk away is somehow an affront to the natural order of things, areproachful reminder to guilty consciences that all the alleged “sacrifices” made for political life,

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the broken families, estranged children, sleepless nights, loss of privacy, and so forth are in factnot sacrifices at all; they are an ego trip for people convinced that their country needs them andthat 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 themarket. 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 andno more. After a long period in the private sector, where he failed to find his real vocation, hewas 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 descendedin a cloud on the man and demanded that he take up the mantle of Liberal leadership. In hisgracious 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 believethat 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 thecoalition debacle, the pressure on McKenna to offer to stand was again enormous. But with eachoffering, Sawler shows, McKenna has become clearer that he doesn’t want it. In 2008, withoutfanfare 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 thehealth of the Liberal Party and returning a Liberal majority government requires a longer timecommitment than I am prepared to make. There will be an ample number of well-qualifiedcandidates 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 “unrelentingnegativity” 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 asambassador to our most important partner and ally is that real power doesn’t come from electedoffice, but from inside yourself. Sawler senses this moral to the McKenna story, but somehownever 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’tcare about party and dreads the politically correct quagmire of partisan politics with its narrowfocus on petty issues. He moves now on the world stage, where other international statesmenrecognize 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. He blogs at 

www.brianleecrowley.com. The headline he proposed to The Globe for this review was “Leave

This Man Alone”.