Canada: Making of a Prime Minister

Nothing so stirs a Canadian’s dander as the outrageous suggestion that Canada is just a northern version of the U.S., with a somewhat chillier climate. In his five years in office, conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker has issued a steady call for what he calls the “Canadianization” of Canada—more Canadian control of such industries as petroleum (57% owned by U.S. investors), more of a Canadian flavor to the country’s art, slang and dress, much of which gets its inspiration south of the border. But politics is something else again. As Canada’s national campaign went into its final stage before the June 18 election, both Diefenbaker and Liberal Challenger Lester (“Mike”) Pearson obviously thought that what makes a President in the U.S. is bound to make a Prime Minister in Canada.

With a bow to Dwight Eisenhower, Pearson supporters appeared at rallies wearing giant-sized “I Like Mike” buttons. But the real emphasis was on more recent political history. Pearson read Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1960 as soon as it came out—as he says, “any man in this occupation would be bound to absorb some of the lessons pointed out.” Like Kennedy, Pearson assembled a band of brain-trusters to analyze Canadian problems. A Kennedy-style GHQ swung into operation, studying reports from the field and firing back tactical orders. Party statisticians made minute poll analyses of the political ground in Canada’s 263 electoral ridings, and the local candidates got full reports.

As the campaign proceeded, with airplane dashes all over the country, being everywhere at once a la Kennedy and Nixon. Pearson struck the familiar Kennedy themes—things at home were stagnating, Canadian prestige abroad was declining. His most often repeated statement was, “Let’s get Canada moving again.” He challenged Diefenbaker to debate on TV, but Diefenbaker declined to be baited.

Diefenbaker, too, is a student of White’s book. But instead of the scientific Kennedy approach to politics, he leans to the intuitive style of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the master of reelection. Thus the book he really likes is Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s The Age of Roosevelt—all three volumes. Like Roosevelt, Diefen baker planned to pace his campaign slowly at the start, run on the record, and then dazzle the voters in the final weeks with a vision of new glories ahead. Roosevelt, an incumbent for so many years, believed that too familiar a face can become a tired face. “Pearson started too early,” says Diefenbaker. “He should have read Schlesinger on Roosevelt, the way I did.” Too early or not, the latest Canadian Gallup poll last week showed the Liberals running ahead. It reported 44% favoring Pearson’s Liberals, 36% for Diefenbaker’s Conservatives, and an important 20% divided among minority parties. The realm’s shrewdest guessers forecast a close election, with the distinct possibility that neither party will win an absolute majority.