Word: pearsons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Recalling his costly 1958 debut, Pearson makes no effort to shift the blame. "It was a very stupid move, and it made me look inept and incompetent just as I became leader...
...Parliament, Pearson became the bruised leader of a lonely little group. To the Liberal old guard, he was an apolitical do-gooder, with no instinct for the jugular. Pearson himself has described Opposition politicians as "the detergents of democracy," whose job it is to "cleanse and purify those in office. The good Opposition leader doesn't go around looking for belts so he may hit below them, or, on the other hand, looking for a parade merely so he may lead...
...Slowly, Pearson restored confidence in himself and in the Liberal Party, and mastered his new role. "His trouble," says Liberal Frontbencher Jack Pickersgill, "was that he wanted to solve the Government's problems for them." It was typical of Pearson that in seeking solutions, he called a thinkers' conference of "liberally minded Canadians" before trying to construct a new electoral platform. Slowly he rebuilt the party, collected the "Pearson team"-a brainy, intensely loyal shadow cabinet, including some of the young Liberals who propelled him into the party leadership. "There is a Pearson mystique in Canada," says...
...Pearson likes to give the impression of operating with effortless ease; the reality is based on hard staff work and a 12-to 15-hour day of his own. "Mike is a prag-matist," explains a former aide. "He gets in the middle of a situation and feels his way around before he decides what to do." He relaxes with anything from The Age of Reason Begins to TV's Beverly Hillbillies, but prefers a hockey match or baseball game. "My tastes." he admits, "are not very high...
...four weary years of opposition, Pearson and his advisers gradually shaped a Liberal program, and Pearson became a more formidable parliamentary antagonist. For a time he had held back, in a conviction more appropriate to a historian than to an Opposition leader, feeling that the Diefenbaker Government was entitled, because of its vast popular vote, to an unhampered right to accomplish its promises. But when Diefenbaker proved surprisingly weak in office, moody and suspicious of his colleagues and subordinates, embroiling Canada with its old friend Britain over the Common Market and antagonizing its U.S. neighbor by its waffling on defense...