Although Pierre Trudeau became leader of the Liberal party in 1968 (and consequently prime minister), he was by no means the overwhelming choice of the delegates. He led the eight other candidates on the first ballot, but gained the support of only 32.5% of the delegates. It was only on the fourth ballot that he squeezed just over 50%. Had he been a few percentage points lower, John Turner’s supporters would likely have gone to Robert Winters on the final ballot and a discouraged Trudeau quite likely would have abandoned politics within a couple of years.

Trudeau’s victory was not entirely a generational change. Although much younger than Lester Pearson, the prime minister he succeeded, he was only a decade younger than the far more experienced Robert Winters, who represented the business wing of the party, and he was about a decade older than John Turner. Given his support from French Canada, it was surprising that his margin of victory was not larger. Trudeaumania was largely a manifestation of his ability to charm women much younger than himself, a gift he did not lose until well into his sixties.

John English, a former member of parliament, history professor at the University of Waterloo, and award winning biographer of Trudeau’s mentor, Lester Pearson, in Citizen of the World, the first volume of his two volume biography of Trudeau, chronicles Trudeau’s development from an inward looking, socially conservative son of the church to a suave cosmopolitan who banned the state from the bedrooms of the nation. The second volume, Just Watch Me, which has been short-listed for the Charles Taylor for literary non-fiction, continues the story to Trudeau’s death.

Once in office, Trudeau, like Obama, was long on charm and short on experience. He initiated policy changes over a wide variety of different areas and his government quickly lost focus and control over its agenda. Radical changes in Canada’s foreign policy proved beyond the new prime minister’s capacity, just as they eluded his predecessors and successors. His major policy successes, bilingualism and multiculturalism, which were meant to acknowledge the equality of all Canadians and to allow Quebecers to move freely across the country and live in their language, evoked massive hostility. Trudeau never understood the resentment and, when he told people that they could turn the Cornflakes boxes around if they didn’t like to look at the French, he merely provoked more antagonism.

Suddenly, in October 1970, members of the Quebec separatist group, the FLQ, assured his place in history. They kidnapped a British diplomat and Quebec cabinet minister. Trudeau refused to negotiate, invoked the War Measures Act, and arrested hundreds of separatist sympathizers, including many of his former friends. He called those who objected to the sight of soldiers on the streets “bleeding hearts,” and when a CBC journalist asked him how far he would go to maintain law and order, he famously replied, “Well, just watch me.” Ninety percent of Canadians approved of his steely determination.

For much of the rest of the decade his accomplishments were few. In concert with his rival, John Turner, he introduced controls over American investment. However, with little background in business or economics, he had little idea how to respond to the OPEC price shock and the stagflation that accompanied it. He ridiculed Robert Stanfield’s proposed wage and price controls in the 1974 election campaign, then squandered his credibility by adopting them soon after.

Although he was capable of great concentration and hard work, his focus in the mid-1970s was disrupted as his marriage deteriorated. Whether a marriage between a man as self-contained as Trudeau and a free-spirited young woman like Margaret almost 30 years his junior could ever have worked is doubtful. If you add the strains of political and family life, you would have to say that the chance of success was wildly improbable. However, if you knew, as we now know, that Margaret suffered from manic depression (bipolar affective disorder), a condition for which there was at the time no effective treatment, then a family tragedy was inevitable. The separation was especially harsh because both Margaret and Trudeau were both loving parents.

After his loss to Joe Clark in the 1979 election, Trudeau became increasingly less interested in politics and, if possible, more engrossed with young, beautiful women. He skipped party events to socialize on the weekends. Former Canadian ambassador to Washington Allan Gotlieb had complained that, even when Trudeau was in office, it took great tact to serve as Trudeau’s host. On one occasion, at a dinner at the embassy, among the 50 guests were three of Trudeau’s girlfriends. When he announced his resignation as Liberal leader in November 1979, he was so listless and offhanded it seemed as if he had lost all interest in politics.

Trudeau’s first stint as prime minister was at best a modest success. As English brilliantly shows, it was Trudeau’s second chance at power, a piece of luck few political leaders get, that made him one of the key figures in Canadian history. I will discuss Trudeau and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in my next article.

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