Former prime ministers Jean Chretien, left, and Stephen Harper participate in a panel discussion in Ottawa, Feb. 2.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
They are greyer now: greyer of hair and face, but also in perception. In their younger days, they saw things more in black and white, as we saw them. But the years have passed, and now we see them through a mist of … what? Nostalgia? Ambivalence? Maybe say complexity, and respect, and, finally, gratitude.
They are the lions in winter: former political leaders who, with their country in danger, have returned to a sort of quasi-public life, offering their advice, their encouragement and their example to help steady a nervous nation.
In recent months, a parade of former leaders – Stephen Harper, Stéphane Dion, Bob Rae, Jean Chrétien, as well as some of more recent vintage, like Jason Kenney – have entered the fray, roaring their defiance of Donald Trump, taking the battle to the separatists in our midst, and calling for steadfastness and unity in the face of these multiple threats to the country’s existence.
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Their resumés are impressive: prime ministers, party leaders, premiers. Yet for all the success they enjoyed in politics, each left public life as spent and diminished figures. Mr. Harper was badly beaten in his last election. So was Mr. Dion, by Mr. Harper. Mr. Chrétien avoided that fate only because his own party forced him to step down. Mr. Rae and Mr. Kenney suffered similar humiliations.
Time, however, has a way of erasing political blemishes. As their life in politics recedes into the past – an 18-year-old voter today would not yet have been born when Mr. Chrétien resigned as prime minister, or when Mr. Harper assumed the office – we tend to remember the good and forget the bad.
We remember Mr. Harper as the steady hand at the tiller, and not the blinkered see-no-evil of the Mike Duffy affair. We remember Mr. Dion the doughty intellectual warrior against the separatists, and not the figure in the hostage video at the height of the coalition crisis. And so on.
They begin to rebuild their political capital, based on their age, their service, and perhaps most of all, by the implicit promise that they will not return to politics (this may not apply so much to Mr. Kenney). Their career as leader is behind them; now they are embarked on a new career, as a former leader.
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They no longer have any formal title. What they have is moral authority. Some of it, to be sure, is borrowed from past office – I don’t think we’d be as interested in the thoughts of Stephen Harper, former chartered accountant – but more of it derives from present dignity: how they carry themselves, how they measure their words, how they deploy the gravitas that elderhood confers. It is still a kind of politics – which is, most of all, the art of being politic – but subtler, and more poignant.
There is, after all, a danger of looking ridiculous: embittered, meddlesome, refighting old battles, unable to give up the limelight. In ordinary times, old soldiers are probably best advised to fade away. But these are not ordinary times. We are rattled, and unsure of ourselves. At such times, a call from your parents is often gratefully received.
There have been few more startling interventions in Canadian political debate than Mr. Harper’s declaration, in the panicky aftermath of Mr. Trump’s first musings about forcing Canada into 51st statehood, that he would be prepared to “accept any level of damage” if he were still prime minister, even “to impoverish the country,” rather than see it be annexed by the United States.
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It was stark, it was bracing, and it helped stiffen a lot of spines that were in danger of going wobbly, especially on the Conservative side – as have Mr. Harper’s more recent statements. It is heartening, in the same vein, to see Mr. Dion suiting up to do battle against a new generation of separatists, this time in Alberta, with the same mix of rigorous logic and close questioning.
Mr. Rae’s recent writings and public statements have helped us understand the severity of the threat posed by the United States under Mr. Trump, and what we can do to survive it. Mr. Kenney is all over social media and elsewhere, pouring scorn on the lunacies of Mr. Trump, the MAGA movement generally, and their northern acolytes.
They no longer have the power to shape events directly. But their experience as veterans of the political wars – often against each other – gives their voices a special resonance. They remind us that we are not so divided as all that, that we have triumphed together over past dangers, that in this moment of national peril we are not lost or alone. The past is still with us. And so is our future.