From: dbowman@shade (Don A. Bowman)
Subject: Re: Scenes We'd Like to See
Organization: University of Waterloo
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 19:17:16 GMT

Gerald Olchowy (golchowy@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca) wrote:
: 
: Clark is the absolutely worst kind of politician...a man who was
: interested in politics and power for the sake of politics and power.
: He is a socialist, who submerged his ideas and ran as a Tory because
: it was the only way he could be elected.  There is no principle he will
: not sacrifice for expediency and the approval of others.  Being liked,
: for Clark, is more important than getting something right.  That 
: characterized his tenure at External Affairs, and the absence of a
: morally principled or intellectually principled vision is written all
: over Charlottetown.  One can simultaneously admire or despise both
: Trudeau and Mulroney because they take positions for reasons, and don't
: give a damn if anyone likes them because of it.  Clark is the ultimate
: appeaser...his politics is the politics of appeasement...Clark doesn't
: care about the diagnosis or solution of problems...whatever it
: takes to make the symptoms bearable and the people like him...thats
: the ticket.

Essentially what you mean is "I don't like what Joe Clark is fighting for.
Therefore I will insult him personally." Instead of facing the issues, you
stab him in the back. I think a man of personal integrity and a former Prime
Minister deserves better than this. Clark was selected for Unity Minister
precisely because he had the most credibility. He was untainted by the
scandals that plagued most of the cabinet. Do you honestly think Clark took
the job to make people like him? Thats a pretty naive view. Joe Clark will
gain no political capital from being Unity minister. All he seems to get is
revilement from the likes of you. You who could do no better. You who simply
put down everything anybody other than yourself derives. I think it is highly
unfair to personally attack someone in a medium in which they cannot respond.
This kind of hate mail would be better addressed to Joe Clark himself, rather
than to us on the net. Your verbal diarrhea just goes on and on.

: 
: Bob Rae is essentially a clone of Clark, although Rae had slightly more
: integrity to stay in the party he belongs.  Mulroney will rue the
: day he entrusted his political future to this duo...it was a massive 
: political mistake which will destroy his legacy.  One can survive
: being despised if one is principled, because one can be respected...Trudeau
: and Maggie Thatcher are perfect examples of this, and I believe Mulroney
: would have been respected in hindsight, but for the disastrous
: abandonment of any principle which Charlottetown represents, which
: he will be forever tarred with, and which history will never forgive
: him for.
: 

Here again you attack Bob Rae based on your opinions and heresy. To say that
Bob and Joe are politically the same is demonstrably false, yet you seem to
believe it. If you were to write the history books (heaven forbid) you might
be right about the last point. I would prefer to think that our descendants,
living in a better country because of this deal, will write about it in more
favourable terms. People like you who spout drivel about Joe Clark being a
socialist sycophant will get quite a different write-up altogether.

--
Don Bowman                (519) 744-6154     dbowman@zeus.uwaterloo.ca
Newsgroups: can.politics