Stephen Harper should count his lucky stars that Canada was so gripped by Art Eggleton’s romantic life last week that Canadians barely noticed the new Alliance leader making every mistake short of wearing a wetsuit.

To be sure, Canadians were caught up with intriguing questions about how Eggleton conducts his affairs. (Will he give you a contract after the first date? Will he still respect you after you’ve handed in the report? Without contracts to offer, what are the former defence minister’s chances now in a singles bar?)

All this helped distract attention as Harper began the task of selling himself to the Canadian public. Conventional wisdom has it that, as long as a party leader looks good on TV and has no rape convictions, he’s got a good chance of success. In fact, the electorate is generally more fussy, and sometimes even judges politicians on what they say.

And Harper says some very odd things. Like the general who can’t suppress his Nazi salute in the film Dr. Strangelove, Harper seems to have trouble suppressing his contempt for Canada and Canadian ways.

It all came spewing out a couple of years ago when he wrote an article in the National Post denouncing Canada as a “second-tier socialistic country” and urging Albertans to question their future inside such a “second-rate” country. Now, this is pretty much standard fare for the Post, but it doesn’t necessarily go down well beyond the business think-tank set.

Nevertheless, Harper was at it again last week, singling out maritimers as defeatists suffering from a “can’t-do” attitude. Attempting to be even-handed, the Alliance leader extended his critique the next day to Quebeckers and those on the Prairies. By this point, what the hell, might as well throw in the rest of the country.

In the supportive atmosphere of an interview with the Post, Harper called defeatism a “general problem” among Canadians.

It’s hard not to feel the guy suffers from a strain of anti-Canadianism, mixed with a heavy dose of pro-Americanism. You can almost imagine him sulking after the Team Canada hockey victories last winter. How did a second-rate country like this manage to whoop the leader of the free world? It just ain’t right.

So, not surprisingly, when he wasn’t bashing Canadians last week, he was praising fellow Washington keener, former Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney. In Harper’s first major speech as Opposition leader, he urged Ottawa to learn from the former prime minister, whose party went down to crushing electoral defeat, and suggested that major trade flare-ups — like the softwood lumber dispute  wouldn’t have happened under Mulroney’s watch.

In fact, the softwood lumber dispute is the perfect example of exactly what Mulroney failed to achieve in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) he saddled us with.

During the original free trade negotiations back in the 1980s, Mulroney always insisted that Canada’s bottom line was winning guaranteed access to the American market. But the U.S. never had any intention of granting that.

Still, U.S. negotiators were happy to string Canadians along on that one, as they later admitted, in order to entice us to give up some key things — including control over our energy.

When Simon Reisman, Canada’s chief negotiator, finally realized the U.S. wouldn’t budge on the guaranteed access issue, he broke off negotiations and told Mulroney he couldn’t get a deal worth signing.

Ignoring Reisman’s advice, Mulroney signed a deal anyway. I wouldn’t fault Mulroney for not winning guaranteed access, but rather for signing a deal without it - a deal in which Canada gave way much else in the naïve belief that the Americans would, in the end, give us the guaranteed access to their market that we so desperately wanted. They didn’t, as the softwood lumber dispute shows.

So it’s a bit odd to wax longingly for Mulroney.

Of course, what Harper thinks we can learn from Mulroney isn’t tough negotiating, but almost exactly the opposite - currying favour with the U.S. by pleasing the president. At this, Mulroney was a master.

Since Mulroney’s departure, Harper contends, Ottawa hasn’t been nearly pleasing enough. He points to our failure to show the appropriate enthusiasm for George Bush’s pet project - a giant missile shield that is the dream of U.S. military leaders and pre-pubescent boys everywhere - as well as our support for an international treaty banning landmines, despite American opposition to the treaty. (Apparently, pushing up the worldwide tally of legless children isn’t too high a price to pay if it means winning kudos inside the White House.)

But legless children aside, another problem with the groveling strategy is that it doesn’t actually work. As the Mulroney legacy shows, the Prime Minister can grovel all he wants and it won’t guarantee anything  except perhaps a directorship or two upon retirement, and the admiration of Stephen Harper.

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...