Milnes: Mark Carney’s ascent — What’s old can be new again

Article content

Celebrated for his skills as a bureaucrat who had held some of Ottawa’s most powerful non-elected positions. Noted for the degree he’d earned from Harvard, adding a doctorate later. An economist of great repute.

A friend to powerful industrialists, this left him with a target on his back. He was, as well, a technocrat consulted by prime ministers of both parties.

Article content

A plodding speech-maker who had great difficulty in making his words and message sing, like the leader he was replacing once did. He had no seat in the House, but was praised by some for this lack of political experience.

He was now a rookie party leader fated to quickly go into battle against a Tory leader with ice-water in his veins. He was the person Liberals turned to in hopes they could rejuvenate their party after it had run out of steam and purpose on the eve of an election.

And of course, he was a leader who had been out of the country for years before coming home to enter politics near the top.

Mark Carney in 2025?

Think again. All this was said about William Lyon Mackenzie King when the Liberals elected their leader 1919. What’s old, after all, is sometimes very new again.

Here, for example, is how Le Devoir described King the day after his convention victory. “Of all the candidates for leadership of the Liberal party, Mackenzie King is the least of a politician,” an editorialist wrote, adding the rookie leader was “a specialist, a technical man.” (Of course, he did have some political experience: three years as an MP and brief membership in Wilfrid Laurer’s cabinet.)

Article content

Editorial writers at the Winnipeg Free Press agreed. “He has been trained to public life and has considerable administrative and public experience … (but ) King’s capacity for leadership is a wholly unknown quantity. His rapid progress in public life, which would appear to argue inherent aptitude for politics, is not conclusive … Mr. King’s future depends primarily of course not upon the present balance, whatever that might be, between his political assets and liabilities, but upon his capacity for leadership.”

The Free Press concluded with a comment eerily similar to what some pro-Carney commentators are saying today. “It will be in the public interest that he should live up to the expectations of his followers, for there will be a great need, in the dangerous times ahead, for sober judgment and sane leadership.”

Chided for lack of patriotism

The Victoria Times also weighed in. “Although the role of a party chieftain is new to W. L. Mackenzie King, he has an unusually fine and diversified experience in public affairs,” it noted. “For eight years, deputy minister of labor … member of numerous royal commissions investigating social and economic questions, special representative of the Dominion in important international questions, author (of Industry and Humanity: A Study in the Principles of Industrial Reconstruction), essayist and lecturer on political economic problems on which he is a well-known authority.”

Article content

At the Toronto Star, writers highlighted the new Liberal chieftain’s response when he was criticized for a suggested lack of patriotism. King had, after all, departed Canada during the First World War after landing a well-paid private-sector job in New York City. Forget the criticisms of Carney’s past involvement with Goldman Sacks and Brookfield; King had bowed at the altar of John D. Rockefeller himself, the king of the robber barons.

“I would not have accepted (that) post,” King said when under fire, “had it meant sacrificing my citizenship or renouncing my career in Canada.”

The Star concluded its portrait of the new Liberal leader by quoting from a recent biography of King. The passage chosen reveals an uncanny resemblance to Canada’s 24th (and untested) prime minister.

“The champions of Mr. King hold him to be fearless, conscientious, thoroughly modern in his outlook, ambitious, keenly industrious, of cool and accurate judgement, with splendid scholarship and plenty of practice in the cause of public service,” reads the description from more than 100 years ago. “… Mr. King’s extreme sobriety of mind constantly tempts the public to underestimate his known virtues and to mistakenly ascribe his purposeful demeanor to conceit.”

Article content

King, of course, went on to win the subsequent election. And many more after that.

As for Mark Carney, only time will tell if the comparison to his illustrious predecessor will be complete. The Liberals can only hope it will.

Kingston’s Arthur Milnes, a past speechwriter to then-prime minister Stephen Harper and memoirs assistant to Brian Mulroney, is the author of Mackenzie King as City Reporter, a chapter in the forthcoming volume, The Enduring Riddle of Mackenzie King, edited by Patrice Dutil (UBC Press).

Editor’s note: This article has been updated from the original.

Article content