Martin's big mistake

The most significant, ceremonial and emotional moment of our times, with admiring heads of state, international allies, adversaries who became friends, five U.S. presidents in attendance -- the prime minister chose not to be there.

Ronald Reagan's funeral in Washington. Why would he miss it? Big mistake by Martin. Understandable, maybe, what with former PM Brian Mulroney honoured by delivering a passionate eulogy to president Reagan.

Undoubtedly Martin -- and/or those who advise him -- feared if he attended he would be in the shadows of attention, that Mulroney's presence would dominate and might hurt Liberals on June 28.

Britain's Tony Blair was there in a lesser role. So was Mikhail Gorbachev. The King of Jordan, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and a cathedral full of big political names that did not get on TV but paid homage to Reagan. Lady Thatcher eulogized Reagan as "a great president, a great American, a great man ... whose ideas were clear but never simplistic."

Brian Mulroney's eulogy was one of the best, with political overtones: Reagan's idealism and belief in freedom, whose courage and convictions gave strength to democracy. The oldest president when first elected, the oldest president when he died, it was Reagan's day -- blustery and wet in Washington, as if reflecting the mood of America.

Yes, if Martin had attended, he'd have played second-fiddle to Mulroney. But Martin, not Mulroney, is Canada's PM. That he chose not to be here must have raised a few eyebrows.

Mulroney and Mila, personal friends of the Reagans, were seated between Prince Charles on one side, Lady Thatcher and Gorbachev on the other. When he entered the cathedral, U.S. President Bush made a point of coming over and greeting Mulroney. In other words, Martin's absence was noted.

A moving moment came when Reagan's flag-draped coffin was being carried down the cathedral aisle and Laura Bush briefly broke ranks to touch British PM Tony Blair's shoulder -- a gesture that spoke volumes of the friendship and bond that exists between the two countries and their leaders.

In his eulogy, the first President Bush got a laugh when he described Reagan's sense of humour. When Reagan was asked how his first meeting with Archbishop Tutu had gone, he replied, "So-so."

If, indeed, Martin didn't attend for fear Conservatives at home might make odious comparisons with Mulroney, and thus embarrass him and Liberals, he was wrong.

How he, Martin, would have handled the situation would have been instructive. Gorbachev must have found it awkward hearing eulogies by Lady Thatcher, Mulroney and the two Bush presidents that took swipes at the old Soviet Union, and how Reagan won the Cold War and made friends out of former enemies.

Gorbachev even gained respect by his presence. Of all the four former U.S. presidents there, Bill Clinton and wife Hillary looked the most discomfited.

Good. It would have been out of place had Clinton spoken. Still, he and Hillary put on brave, albeit it glum faces.

Walesa, once an anti-Soviet dissident, said he couldn't understand why Reagan was sometimes disparagingly called a "cowboy."

"When I was a child, the cowboys were always fighting the bad guys," and winning, he recalled.

While the funeral was a celebration of Reagan's cheerful optimism, convictions, triumphs, what was clear by the time the eulogies and TV tributes were done, is that the spiritual heir to Reagan's presidency is George Bush -- almost more Reagan's ideological son than his real father.

A text of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's tribute to President Ronald Reagan:

In the spring of 1987 President Reagan and I were driven into a large hangar at the Ottawa Airport, to await the arrival of Mrs. Reagan and my wife, Mila, prior to departure ceremonies for their return to Washington. We were alone except for the security details.

President Reagan's visit had been important, demanding and successful. Our discussions reflected the international agenda of the times: The nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union and the missile deployment by NATO; pressures in the Warsaw pact, challenges resulting from the Berlin Wall and the ongoing separation of Germany; and bilateral and hemispheric free trade.

President Reagan had spoken to Parliament, handled complex files with skill and good humor -- strongly impressing his Canadian hosts -- and here we were, waiting for our wives.

When their car drove in a moment later, out stepped Nancy and Mila -- looking like a million bucks. As they headed towards us, President Reagan beamed, threw his arm around my shoulder and said with a grin: "You know, Brian, for two Irishmen we sure married up."

In that visit -- in that moment -- one saw the quintessential Ronald Reagan -- the leader we respected, the neighbor we admired and the friend we loved -- a president of the United States of America whose truly remarkable life we celebrate in this magnificent cathedral today.

Presidents and prime ministers everywhere sometimes wonder how history will deal with them.

Some can even evince a touch of the insecurity of Thomas d'Arcy McGee, an Irish immigrant to Canada, who became a Father of our Confederation. In one of his poems, McGee, thinking of his birthplace, wrote poignantly:

"Am I remembered in Erin
I charge you, speak me true
Has my name a sound, a meaning
In the scenes my boyhood knew."

Ronald Reagan will not have to worry about Erin because they remember him well and affectionately there. Indeed they do: from Erin to Estonia, from Maryland to Madagascar from Montreal to Monterey. Ronald Reagan does not enter history tentatively -- he does so with certainty and panache. At home and on the world stage, his were not the pallid etchings of a timorous politician. They were the bold strokes of a confident and accomplished leader.

Some in the West during the early 1980s believed communism and democracy were equally valid and viable. This was the school of "moral equivalence." In contrast Ronald Reagan saw Soviet communism as a menace to be confronted in the genuine belief that its squalid underpinning would fall swiftly to the gathering winds of freedom. Provided, as he said, that NATO and the industrialized democracies stood firm and united. They did. And we know now who was right.

Ronald Reagan was a president who inspired his nation and transformed the world. He possessed a rare and prized gift called leadership -- that ineffable and sometimes magical quality that sets some men and women apart so that millions will follow them as they conjure up grand visions and invite their countrymen to dream big and exciting dreams.

I always thought that President Reagan's understanding of the nobility of the presidency coincided with the American dream.

One day President Mitterrand in referring to President Reagan said: "Il a vraiment la notion de l'Etat." Rough translation: "He really has a sense of the State about him." The translation does not fully capture the profundity of the observation: what President Mitterrand meant was that there is a vast difference between the job of president and the role of president.

Ronald Reagan fulfilled both with elegance and ease, embodying himself that unusual alchemy of history, tradition, achievement, inspiration, conduct and national pride that define the special role the president of the United States must assume at home and around the world. "La notion de l'Etat" -- no one understood it better than Ronald Reagan and no one more eloquently summoned his nation to high purpose or brought forth the majesty of the presidency and made it glow, better than the man who saw his country as a "shining city on a hill"

May our common future and that of our great nations be guided by wise men and women who will remember always the golden achievements of the Reagan era and the success that can be theirs if the values of freedom and democracy are preserved, unsullied and undiminished, until the unfolding decades remember little else.

I have been truly blessed to have had a friend like Ronald Reagan. I am grateful that our paths crossed and that our lives touched. I shall always remember him with deepest admiration and affection and I shall always feel honored by the journey we traveled together in search of better and more peaceful tomorrows for all God's children, everywhere.

And so, in the presence of his beloved and indispensable Nancy, his children, family, friends and the American people he so deeply revered, I say "au revoir' today to a gifted leader, historic president and gracious human being. And I do so with a line from Yeats, who wrote:

"Think where man's glory most begins and ends and say -- my glory was that I had such friends."

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