By Lloyd Mackey

TWO BOOKS were released by the same publisher -- Key Porter -- during the past two weeks. They are a study in contrasts, whose lone commonality is a focus on Conservative leadership in Canada.

Blue Thunder: The truth about Conservatives from Macdonald to Harper is a highly readable and comprehensive 504-page history by Conservative insider Bob Plamondon.

It enjoyed considerable pre-release exposure in the National Post, among other mainstream Canadian publications.

The other book is Sheeple: Caucus confidential in Stephen Harper's Ottawa. Its author is Garth Turner, the defeated Toronto area MP, who believes that the present prime minister exercises more control over his caucus than he should.

Turner's claimed reason for writing Sheeple is his insistence on the political usefulness of the blogosphere.

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Apart from my faith-political comments, appearing below, I want to focus for a moment on Plamondon's coverage of Sir Robert Borden, who served as Conservative prime minister during and after World War I.

Borden, in Plamondon's view, was the most international of Canada's prime ministers, likely because he led during a world war.

The Borden story was a surprise to me, as a contemporary supporter of the idea of centre-right power-sharing arrangements.

It was during Borden's tenure that a de facto coalition existed, consisting of the minority Conservative caucus and a rump of outside-Quebec Liberal MPs. The purpose for the arrangement was mainly to win a cross-partisan acceptance for the idea of conscription and the war effort, which was not popular in Quebec.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier, opposition leader and the Liberal prime minister who preceded Borden to the top spot, stayed out of the coalition. He had no difficulty, however, with some of his Liberals going along and even accepting cabinet posts.

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On the faith/political approach, Plamondon carefully provides a few clues to the Protestant-Catholic dichotomy that have influenced all political parties through the years.

I am aware that he is a bit of the student of these matters, but he tends to err on the side of caution in linking together too extensively the role of faith and political action.

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I was particularly looking for some reference to the faith perspective of John Diefenbaker, who was known to be a devout Baptist who made serious attempts to live his life in line with biblical teachings and ethics.

It comes at the very end of an extended treatment of the prime minister's time in office, between 1957 and 1963. Plamondon maintains that some biographers' depictions of erratic and irrational behaviour on the part of Diefenbaker were out of line and a distortion of his populist approach.

Then he concludes his assessment with a 2007 Stephen Harper quote defending Diefenbaker, which goes thusly:

If ever there was a Conservative prime minister whose reputation needed to be reclaimed from Liberal slander, it is the Chief, 'Honest John'. No other prime minister of any stripe did more for the cause of fairness and equality and inclusion. His Bill or Rights, for example, preceded the Liberal Charter of Rights by over two decades . . . Moreover, like Macdonald and Borden, he was a vigorous defender of Canadian sovereignty.

It is understandable that Harper would come to Diefenbaker's defence. They are both Ontario-born, evangelical Christian, western-based, non-elitist politicians with a modest inclination towards libertarian views. Though Harper is known to be more decisive than Diefenbaker, they share a reluctance to spend political capital or take positions that would be unpopular.

. . . (Diefenbaker) enthralled the nation and gave it hope. The greatest tribute one can receive is to forever be known as a man of the people.

As for Sheeple, its main attempt to provide a faith-political interface grows out of Garth Turner's apparent antagonism toward Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College.

McVety, according to Turner, tried to knock him off as a Conservative candidate, and in the process, McVety allegedly implied that he had better access to the prime minister than did Turner.

If Plamondon is cautious about drawing too strong a connection between faith and politics, I would gently suggest that Turner leans very far in the other direction.

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Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

April 30/2009