Canada’s most successful King
More educative entertainment from Tom Scott’s YouTube channel, featuring Evan Hadfield:
William Lyon Mackenzie King was a sexually repressed, hypocritical, guilt-ridden, prostitute-visiting momma’s boy who was exceptionally weird. He was also, perhaps, Canada’s greatest prime minister. Evan talks about legacy, and about how you don’t need to be a good person to be a good politician.
Prime Minister for 21 years in a democracy? That’s pretty impressive and along with other examples such as Winston Churchill’s depression and love of alcohol, it’s a reminder of the limitations of a puritanical approach to the personal lives of politicians.
Being a great and successful political leader is not the same as being a wonderful parent, a kind human or even a half-decent neighbour.
Even so, when it comes to lessons the Liberal Democrats can learn from Canada, I suggest looking elsewhere than to King’s private life.
Behaviour of choice is a different issue from something like depression and depression shouldn’t be listed as something that makes you a not very nice person. I’m not sure that being temperamentally deceitful isn’t going to impact on how good you are as a political leader. While a degree of deceitfulness probably helps (or at least the ability to be vague while appearing definite, like De Gaulle over Algeria), a high degree of deceitfulness will almost certainly be sussed and damage your ability to lead and be believed. Being an effective leader and being a good (beneficial) leader are of course not the same. Hitler was an effective leader because he mostly believed his own lies.
Some of the issues mentioned here can actually help leadership at the higher levels. Someone who has wrestled with demons like Lincoln (depression), Churchill (depression and heavy alcohol use), Grant (heavy alcohol use and self-doubt), FDR (serious physical impairment suddenly visited on a healthy, quite young man), JFK (serious back pain from war wound, oppressive father) or Cromwell (depression) can gain from that not only resilience but also an ability to communicate the heights and depths and to understand suffering.