The Manning papers: Few insights, much bile
by Lorne Gunter
Nov. 3, 2002
Reprinted on LifeSite with permission of the author

Review of
Think Big: My Adventures in Life and Democracy
by Preston Manning
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

452 pp., $37.99

Much of the attention paid to Think Big: My Adventures in Life and Democracy, Preston Manning's defensive autobiography (aren't all autobiographies defensive?), has centred on the sneering, bitchy chapters that blame Stockwell Day for the stillbirth of Manning's second political baby, the Canadian Alliance, and cast doubt on current leader Stephen Harper's ability to fill Manning's shoes any better than Day.

Fair enough. Acid, self-justification and gossip -- and if we're lucky, confession -- are the pillars of autobiography. And since Manning doesn't gossip in Think Big -- he frequently repeats damning hearsay about rivals, but never engages in the juicy who-was-wired-on-what or who-was-boinking-whom stuff -- and since he has probably (admirably) never committed any sin worth confessing, that leaves only bile and rationalization to sustain more than 400 pages.

The smears on Day and the misgivings about Harper are worth a look, if for no other reason than they indirectly confirm what everyone suspected all along: Despite his denials at the time, Manning was foursquare behind the dissidents who broke away from the Alliance at the height of Day's leadership troubles in the spring and summer of 2001.

Perhaps Manning wasn't the plotter-in-chief. That would be just like him, giving quiet signals behind the scenes, while all the while denying publicly (and to himself) that he was involved.

Think Big makes no admission that Manning gathered together his loyalists and began arranging Day's demise within days of Day's stunning leadership victory in July 2000. There's no blurted disclosure that Manning loyalists at Alliance headquarters leaked details of a $70,000 donation to the party from a lawyer at the firm representing Day in his defamation suit with Red Deer lawyer Lorne Goddard. Think Big contains no lip-slip that senior Day staffers, who had also worked for Manning, timed their resignations, one after the other, deliberately to leave the impression that Day's grasp on the leadership was weakening.

Indeed, on the Day versus The Dissidents fight (Manning bristles at his loyalists being styled dissidents, spending nearly two pages explaining why they were really the true CA loyalists), Think Big is silent on Manning's own participation. Which is probably an accurate reflection of events: Manning killed Day with his silence. Manning could have put an end to the civil war over Day's leadership with a single news conference calling off his dogs. He didn't.

While most readers will find such quasi-insider cattiness Think Big's most compelling aspect, I was most taken by how the book, once again, confirmed Manning's central characteristic, his habit of accusing others of crimes he himself is committing, in spades, and of justifying in himself actions he finds reprehensible in everyone else.

For instance, he makes much of how despicable it was for Day and his organizers to court evangelical Christians, hard, during the 2000 leadership race. Huh? This is a man I followed, as a reporter in the early 1990s, to church basements and gatherings of religious folks in which he tried to convert them to his new party. Is it just that he is bitter Day proved better at this tactic? No. What seems to trouble Manning most is that key Day operatives made "appearances for political purposes at worship or prayer services." It's OK to play hardball with Christian voters, just not, in Manning's mind, between the sermon and the blessing.

There is Manning on page 30 claiming to have created in Reform in 1987 an "open, transparent organization in which every member was treated equally and fairly," after having just explained on page 29 how he denied Jack Ramsay delegate status at the same founding because Ramsay was, at the time, a Western separatist. Ah, yes, the bright line between fair and equal treatment for every member, and the bums rush for every member who disordered Manning's neat plans for his party.

Think Big also highlights Manning's almost pathological desire to avoid conflict. His habit of jettisoning caucus members who landed the party in hot water. His refusal to take on hot-button issues of the day, such as gun control, because to do so would jeopardize the forming of an educated public opinion. (As opposed to the vacuum his absence left?) Even his initial support for the Charlottetown accord -- which he misrepresents in the book, claiming never to have been in favour, although three witnesses insist he was -- was based on his unwillingness to take ideological sides for fear of controversy.

If you want to know why Manning dislikes Day so much, buy Think Big. But if you want genuine insights into Manning and the movement he created, hunt down a copy of the biography Waiting for the Wave by Tom Flanagan. It's a better read.