"He is a pathological liar. In fairness, I don't believe he knows he's lying..."

The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister.

Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney -- I hate the man. I mean, I personally, on all levels, despise this man. I came of age while he squatted in the Prime Minister's mansion. The first political outrage I ever experienced occurred when he implemented the Goods & Services Tax. It happened at a time when I was working a video store, just finishing secondary school. The position gave me access to scores of people -- citizens -- who had no trouble voicing their outrage that yet another tax had been slapped on to the Grand Dray Horse, known as the Canadian people. There were a few instances when people projected their outrage on to me, the humble clerk and purveyor of the bad news, as the GST became part of the price of renting movies. I recall deflecting the outrage, actually gaining a wry smile of agreement from these hotheads by saying that in my opinion the GST was a "legal crime."

Gosh, those naive days when I believed all it would take was to vote Mulroney out of office to get Canada back on track, and once more have responsive politicians in power. When the Referendum on Quebec occurred in the early 1990s, and Mulroney was all over the airwaves nervously pleading with Canadians that "This is not a referendum on my government," I voted in exactly the way I thought would harm and distress Mulroney most.

The first Letter to the Editor I wrote to my local newspaper was an angst-ridden missive decrying the Prime Minister's arrogance and detachment from the reality of Canadian citizens. I may as well have accused him of being sick with a disease called "Being a Canadian Prime Minister." Maybe the PM's mansion should be demolished and the land sewn with salt. Maybe an "arrogant asshole parasite" exists in the Ottawa water supply.

It was during Brian Mulroney's tenure as Canada's leader that I became so incensed by the news of his daily outrages, that I turned away. I'm embarrassed and chagrined to admit it, but I quickly found reading or watching Canadian news so intolerable, I just turned away. Since then, I've cultivated a frightening and abiding ignorance of the details of Canadian politics. I know what is happening in a general sense, but the Mulroney Government so triggered my gag reflex that I turned into exactly the sort of apathetic citizen I've grown to resent.

Mulroney supporters would rightly me accuse of scapegoating Brian Mulroney for my own human frailties and shortcomings in dealing with a situation I found fraught with affront. But that does not diminish the fact that Brian Mulroney was a disastrous prime minister. I hope that he's among the most hated prime minister's, as well.

When he skulked out of office, I was pleased. When the Progressive Conservative party was voted out of existence in the early 1990s, it finally seemed that Canadian democracy had worked.

Then we saddled ourselves with Jean Chretien, and I realized that there is a psychosis called "Being a Canadian Prime Minister." Surely, Canadian politics and its corrosive horde of corrupt practitioners is the result of some clever radical group tainting the Ottawa water supply with military strength LSD. The only answer to the problem of Canadian politics, seems to me, is for the entire country to move to Ottawa, breathe the air, drink the water, and maybe the madness that hobbles our great nation will at least finally make sense -- like watching Pink Floyd's The Wall under the influence of LSD.

But there will never be another Briam Mulroney. Crybaby extraordinaire, liar supreme, disconnected beyond the veteran disconnected. He is a crumb of a human being, and I'm pleased to see this new book about him, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister, provides him with more than enough rope with which to hang himself.