The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics

Table of Contents:
Preface: The Joy of Winning Acknowledgments Introduction: Party Systems and Liberal Leaders Pierre Trudeau: Victory, Fall, and Recovery 1974 The Liberal Party and Pierre Trudeau: The Jockey and the Horse 1979 The Government’s Defeat, the Party’s Decline, and the Leader’s (Temporary) Fall 1980 Hiding the Charisma: Low-Bridging the Saviour John Turner: From Disappointment to Despair 1984 The Dauphin and the Doomed: John Turner’s Debacle 1988 Election or Referendum? Disoriented in Defeat Jean Chrétien: Power without Purpose 1993 Yesterday’s Man and His Blue Grits: Backwards into Jean Chrétien’s Future 1997 Securing Their Future Together 2000 The Liberal Threepeat: The Multi-System Party in the Multi-Party System Paul Martin: Saved By the Far Right 2004 Disaster and Recovery: Paul Martin As Political Lazarus Conclusion The Liberal Party As Hegemon: Straddling Canadian History Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Stephen Clarkson is the author of Trudeau and Our Times, Canada and the Reagan Challenge, and Uncle Sam and Us.

Review :
It is a popular political history, rich in detail, sparse in language, packed with backroom anecdotes, well-documented information, and the incisive political analysis that only an academic of Mr. Clarkson’s stature can bring to a controversial, political hot-seller. University of Toronto political scientist Stephen Clarkson’s is an academic work of the best kind. He covers a mountain of analytic literature on the subject and does not talk down to his readership. Yet he yet writes in a comprehensible and coherent style. His is a work intended for the educated layman, as well as the political scientist. It will be useful to journalists, teachers, lawyers and anyone interested in an intelligent treatment of our national politics. Tough reading aside, The Big Red Machine is nonetheless alive with clear, bright thinking. Clarkson “gets” electoral politics. He avoids the journalistic trap of generalizing the popular will, and has a good feel for the ordering of the electorate into coalitions. Liberal campaign planners should read this book, especially the chapters about the Trudeau campaigns, which challenge the memory of a charismatic juggernaut with an evidence-based portrait of spotty organization, weak strategy and frequently indifferent performance. Clarkson is particularly well targeted on the Liberal capacity to engage with ruthless focus and ballistic intensity when elections start to slip away ... As one enjoys this book’s analysis and intellectual framework, it seems particularly worthwhile to ask whether the story it documents of mechanics over ideas is, really, in some way, a story of Canada itself.