The Senator Speaks: Mike Duffy Had an Option

As Senator Mike Duffy started his own testimony this week, in his fraud trial, he unwittingly evoked the withering verbal attack by Progressive Conservative leader Brian Mulroney on Liberal leader John Turner in 1984. In a televised debate Turner, the newly-minted prime minister following Pierre Trudeau’s retirement, was assailed by Mulroney for finalizing some controversial Liberal patronage appointments made—but not finalized—by Trudeau before the former P.M. left office.    

     Mulroney famously told Turner he had a choice, or an option to say ‘no,’ and that he could have refused to finalize Trudeau’s patronage appointments. By many accounts, Turner never had a reasonable chance of winning that election after Mulroney reprimanded him as he did.

Duffy Could Have Said ‘No’

As most followers of the news know, Senator Mike Duffy is facing a slew of criminal charges relating to his allegedly fraudulent expense claims. In the many months leading up to his trial, Duffy, on his own and through his lawyers, has consistently seemed to blame others for his current misfortunes, instead of accepting responsibility for his own behaviors—and instead of acknowledging he largely contributed to his own present predicament. In this context, Duffy has always implied he had no choice in being named to the senate, and that he had to accept the senate appointment. In fact, he did have a choice: he could have said ‘no.’

If Duffy had exercised his prerogative and declined Harper’s senate appointment, he could have preserved his previous generally respectable reputation, he could have saved himself a lot of presumed heartache and aggravation, and he could have prevented the rest of us from being subjected to this sad excuse for a story for so long, so far.

Throughout this whole sorry mess, Duffy has intimated he was reluctantly forced into accepting a seat in the Senate, representing the Conservative Party, after being appointed in 2008 by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Yet, was Duffy really the reluctant senator? Various media reports over the past several months indicate he had, more than once, lobbied at least one previous prime minister to be named to the senate.

High Ambitions

In reports of Duffy’s first day of testimony he appeared to portray himself as some sort of unsophisticated, academically-uneducated rube from Prince Edward Island. In fact, for many years Duffy had been a successful broadcast journalist living and working in Ottawa, and, by many other less-fortunate people’s standards, he was living the high life and travelling far and wide in his work. But according to various news reports, in Duffy’s first day of his own long-awaited testimony this week, he seemed to be looking for pity and sympathy.

To Be (A Senator) or Not to Be

Many media reports say Duffy initially told Harper, before being appointed to the senate, that Conservatives would not be pleased with his appointment as a Tory senator since he, Duffy, was not a Conservative. Reports of Duffy’s court testimony indicate Harper told him to not worry about Conservatives’ complaints in that regard, and they would ‘get over it.’

Ultimately, Duffy was appointed as a senator representing the Conservative Party. Since Duffy accepted Harper’s senate appointment, supposedly against Duffy’s own better judgement, he can be perceived as opportunistic, ethically and morally-challenged, and driven by ambition, greed, ego, and insecurity. Perhaps he perceived the senate appointment as the culmination of his previous efforts to be successful and famous, and as a way for him to feel and seem important.

Choices

Through it all, from the beginning of this sordid situation, presumably, Duffy had a choice, or an option: 1) he could accept Harper’s senate appointment, representing the Conservative Party—even though Duffy says he told the former prime minister he was not even a Conservative; or 2) he could just say ‘no.’ In this regard, Duffy can be perceived as being the author of his own current misfortunes—including his criminal court trial over alleged fraudulent expense claims. Duffy easily could have avoided all of this by simply saying he would not sit in the senate as a Conservative because it was not right, since he wasn’t a Tory.

You Had an Option, Sir

Is Duffy guilty of any or all of the fraud charges he is facing? The court will decide that. Is Duffy guilty of bringing all of this on himself? Is he right to seem to be blaming everyone else except himself for the mess he’s in? If he hadn’t accepted the senate appointment, and made other choices, would his personal and professional reputations be suffering as they likely are now?

In this context, Brian Mulroney’s scathing rebuke of John Turner in 1984, for finalizing former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s cushy patronage appointments, echoes loud and clear: You had an option, sir. Duffy could have said ‘no’ to being a Conservative senator, and avoided his current legal troubles. Instead he said ‘yes’ to the senate appointment and got himself into his present predicament.