Musings from a Neighbor

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

Dressed in his carefully tailored corduroys, Canada's Pierre Elliott Trudeau moved with an athlete's swift stride to the luncheon table at Blair House during the final hours of his courtesy call on Neighbor Jimmy Carter.

"Nice table," he murmured to the butler when he saw the fresh flowers and sparkling crystal. He decided to sit in the chair opposite the one assigned him. Calling for "a cold American beer," he issued a clearly audible apology to the California wine industry, whose Colombard had already been poured. Then for more than an hour he talked about the fellow from whose office he had just come. It may be the best portrait yet of President Jimmy Carter at work.

There is an engagingly sinister quality about Trudeau's sharp features, just the faint whiff of Mephistopheles presiding over a steaming cauldron. But he was mellow that day. Jimmy Carter had asked Trudeau to advise him as he moved into the murky world of international politics. "Now he's asked you and 215 million Americans," chortled a guest. Trudeau chuckled. Yes, Carter might have been trying to flatter him. That was often done in this business. But Trudeau's conclusion was that Carter was sincere. Carter, insisted the Prime Minister, was a man obviously at ease with himself. It had been different with Richard Nixon.

Trudeau did not sound bitter about Nixon's nasty description of him, as revealed by the Watergate tapes. He could understand, said Trudeau, why somebody might call him an "asshole," as Nixon had done. Really, he went on, Nixon had been good to Canada, even kindly in phone calls and small courtesies to Trudeau personally.

But Carter--there was new hope plainly registered by Trudeau that the President would add strength to the U.S. and help Canada to keep secessionist-minded Quebec in its fold. Until his Quebec problem became so immense, Trudeau had rather enjoyed anti-U.S. Canadian nationalism.

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Carter had been well briefed, the Prime Minister said. He could conceptualize, a point obviously appealing to the intellectual Trudeau, who loves history and broad views. Trudeau conceded that the two men differed in their approach to human rights, to the Soviet dissidents. Trudeau felt the need to keep his voice lower. He hinted that maybe Carter had been a bit surprised at the response to his letter to Andrei Sakharov. But there was also a touch of admiration for a President who based important actions on the simple criterion of "what was right."

The two leaders had talked in considerable detail about the dire consequences to Canada and the U.S. if Quebec did leave the Federation. Would British Columbia, lodged between Washington State and Alaska, want to be part of the U.S.? What of North American defense responsibilities now carried by Canada? Would American business greedily pour into Quebec to get cheap power and labor? It was clearly one of those problems that are so terrible that no responses could really be considered. It just had to be prevented.

Trudeau said as much when he went before a joint session of Congress and, doubling his fist, declared, "Canada's unity will not be fractured!" Ironically, he may be the last foreign leader to make such an appearance for some time. House Speaker Tip O'Neill considers such intrusions in the congressional routine "a waste of time," and even Trudeau's eloquence did not change his mind.

In the graceful dining room of Blair House, Trudeau pondered the lessons from Thucydides and Macaulay, that all countries must finally change. Just then his young wife Margaret entered the room, fresh and smiling from a walk in the sunlight. With her at his side and with Friend Jimmy Carter's exhortations ringing in his ears, Pierre Elliott Trudeau headed back into the fray.

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