My Years as Prime Minister

Trudeau valued performance above image. He Knew he could give me a shovel if there was a mess to clean up, and he kept moving me from one mess to another.

There's no such thing as a genius in politics, or at least I have never met one. There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.

I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mitchell Sharp once put it, the bigger the staff, the smaller the minister.

There is nothing more nervous than a million dollars - it moves very fast, and it doesn't speak any language.

The two of us had come a long way together from our humble beginnings and the basement apartment that had been our first home as newlyweds in 1957, when I was still a law student at Laval University in Quebec City.

Canadian federalism is more than a form of government. It's also a system of values that allows different people in diverse communities to live and work together in harmony for the good of all.

Over the years, I have seen too many politicians ruin their careers because they could not accept defeat graciously.

Vision is not political rhetoric.

" Mr President," I said, " I have to tell you something. I don't want to get too close to you." He looked startled. I imagine it was a rare thing for a U.S. Commander-in-chief to hear. "Canada is your best friend, largest trading partner, and closest ally, but we are also an independent country. Keeping some distance will be good for both of us. If we look as though we're the fifty-first state of the United States, there is nothing we can do for you internationally, just as the governor of a state can't do anything for you internationally. But if we look independent enough, we can do things for you that even the CIA cannot do."

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

The problem was, I enjoyed Question Period too much and loved the challenge it provided. Far from being a dreaded burden, it had become an exciting part of my life; opposition members attacked me, I fought back, I won or lost or held them to draw, and the next day we did it all over again.

Everybody has the right to speak up in a democracy. We would be in trouble as a society if there wasn't a constant pressure to make reforms and to be just. Sometimes as prime minister, when I was caught up in a really loud demonstration, I used to say to myself that I deserved it because of all the demonstrations I myself had organized as a student against Duplessis.

Aline and I have travelled a very long, very hard road together, from our working class homes in rural Quebec to the palaces of London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Politics was the route, public service the reward.

Our old-fashioned system is better than any new-fangled voting machine. Not only is it guaranteed to work, but there is something I find appealing in putting a mark on a piece of paper for the candidate of your choice, as opposed to pulling a lever as if you were gambling on a slot machine in Las Vegas.

Three months later, on September 5, 2001, at a pro-am event preceding the Canadian Open at the Royal Montreal Golf Club, I was invited to play a round with Tiger Woods. Nothing in the game of politics had ever been as nerve-racking as that game of golf.

I never bought into the Laffer curve, a theory, named after an American supply-side economist who had been an adviser to the Reagan administration, that essentially argues that a government will increase its revenue by reducing its taxes. If it were that easy, everybody would do it. What politician doesn't want to reduce taxes in order to win votes? Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues? In practice, every government that toyed with this theory ended up with larger deficits, higher interest rates and greater social inequality.

For all its prestige, its fabulous views, its indoor pool, and its lovely garden, 24 Sussex is more like an old hotel than a modern home.

Politicians of all stripes are always in danger at looking at every problem from an abstract point of view or being briefed by officials, academics, or economists who know every science but the science of human nature.