legacy

Former colleagues and advisors talk about the former prime minister’s place in Canadian history

Le Devoir’s Alec Castonguay has a great story today about Harper starting to lay the foundations of his legacy, a central pillar of which will be a new democracy-promotion agency. Its central mandate will be to smooth the transition to democracy in former dictatorships or authoritarian states by promoting the creation and flourishing of new political parties.

Call it a motivational series or a legacy-burnishing tour: President George W. Bush has been on a cross-Canada speaking tour conveying the lessons he learned over the course of his eight years in the White House. He governed through some of the most challenging crises in U.S. history and has been using the events to explain and defend the policies he implemented during those tumultuous times. Furthermore, his speaking tour serves as a prelude to the book he intends to publish next year. With Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld soon to publish their own accounts of the Bush years, it will be interesting to see if Bush’s view of his tenure differs in any substantial way with that of his collaborators. Historians and critics will surely have a field day parsing through the interpretations.

Defends his decision to invade Iraq. Offers Obama help, if he wants it.

Elections Canada released its quarterly fundraising figures today, and it is pretty grim for the Libs. Following the established pattern, the Tories raised about $3.5 million from almost 34 000 donors, while the Liberals raised just over $900k from 9500 (!!!) donors. In short, the Liberals have still not figured out how to raise money since Jean Chretien introduced the “dumb as a bag of hammers” financing reforms.