Synopses & Reviews
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 2004s 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 Canadas “most cussed and discussed” political commentator. Here, his no-holds-barred profile of Canadas 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”: “Theyre all married to one another. Theyre shacked up with one another. Their wives are on the payroll of the CBC. Its 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 dont 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.
Table of Contents
A Chronology: The Mulroney Years
Introduction: Mulroney Unplugged
The Secret Tapes
1. “Canadian people like me, you know?”
Mulroney on His Rise to Power
2. “You had an option, sir!”
The 1984 Coronation
3. “What did I do wrong?”
Patronage and the Art of Politics
4. “Goodbye Charlie Brown!”
Scandals, Retreats and Flip-Flops
5. “The sweetest deal ever known to man”
The Meech Lake Accord
6. “Canadians think Im an arrogant bastard – thats not a bad position to be in”
The Second Mandate
7. “Grab em by their privates, and their hearts and minds will follow”
The Mulroney Gang
8. “First of the great betrayers”
Lucien Bouchard
9. “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”
The Free Trade Crusade
10. “A really sick place”
Life in Ottawa
11. The Mila factor
Brians Greatest Asset
12. The dirty dozen
Some People Who Really Bugged Him
13. “Even fucking Hitler got better press”
Mulroney on the Fourth Estate
14. “I Told You I Loved You, Now Get OUT!”
The Perils of People Power
15. “I led a revolution”
Mulroney on the World Stage
16. “What did they achieve?”
Mulroney Rates His Peers
17. “Keep your pecker up, Kim!”
Severing Her Own Jugular
18. Keeping caucus happy
Walking Through Fire for Brian
19. “The best since Sir John A.”
Mulroney Rates Himself
20. “About as ideological as that coffee pot”
The Vision Thing
21. “He needs a bit of praise, the poor bugger”
Mulroney as Others Saw Him
Conclusion: Mulroney Redux
Appendix A: The Interviews
Appendix B: The Patronage Machine
Appendix C: Secret Strategy Memo: Gaining Control of the Senior Civil Service
Appendix D: Paying Their Own Way