Tony Blair's Tender Legacy

As alluded to in part one of Michael Cockerell's Tony Blair: the Inside Story, many politicians spend a great deal of time and energy concerning themselves with their legacy.

Unfortunately for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he will very likely share a legacy with US President George W Bush. It likely will not be an entirely positive one.

Like George W Bush, Blair's departure from office was mired by tension with his successor. Just as Bush's departure from office has been mired by increasing tensions with his Vice President, Dick Cheney -- who believed Bush had stopped taking his advice during their second term -- Blair's final days were marked by tensions beteween himself and Gordon Brown, his Chancellor of the Exchequer.

For Bush and Cheney, the matter was clearly the war on terror. For Blair and Brown, the issue was the prospects of Britain replacing Pounds Sterling with the Euro as Britain's currency. Blair favoured this, and Brown did not.

Like Bush, Blair's legacy will be decided by whether or not he led his country to war under false pretenses. Like Bush, Blair's legacy will be impacted by personal controversy. For Bush, a lingering controversy was the outing of CIA agent Valeri Plame. For Bush, the lingering controversy was the suicide of Dr David Kelly, a British arms inspector who had been accused of helping falsify evidence justifying the war.

Like Bush, Blair's efforts to reform the civil service badly backfired. There was a palpable backlash against Blair's proposed reforms for hospitals and schools. Meanwhile, Bush led a dismantling of regulatory economic agencies that eventually helped precipitate a global economic recession. Bush's educational and health care reforms were widely lampooned. At one point, Bush even vetoed a Democrat bill that would supply health care to millions of uninsured children.

Like Bush, Blair left office amidst a push within his own party to minimize its association with him. While Brown worked behind the scenes to collectively push and shame Blair out of office, Bush failed to show up to his own party convention in order to best keep his distance from Presidential nominee John McCain.

Like Bush, Blair was viewed as a liability to his party. In a 2005 election that proved to be a significant setback for his party, Blair was targeted by the opposition Conservative party of Britain as an individual who had lied to take Britain to war in Iraq, and would lie to win an election. Bush was encouraged to stay as far away from the 2008 federal election campaign as he could in order to avoid associating McCain too closely with Bush.

(These efforts were mitigated when McCain hugged Bush at a political rally.)

Like Bush, Blair's time in office was marked by a savage terrorist attack. For Bush, 9/11 eventually wound up writing the story of his time as President. For Blair, 7/7 will be central to his legacy. Unlike Bush, however, who led his country to war partially as a retaliation for a terrorist attack, 7/7 could be viewed as a retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq.

Just as Bush's government had received ample warnings about the impending 9/11 attacks, Blair's government had received numerous warnings about the "inevitable" attacks that finally came to fruition on 7/7.

Like Bush, Blair led his party into office as a well-organized political machine, ready to do its country's business. Like Bush, by the time Blair departed, his party was in shambles, with its premier political opposition -- in this case, the David Cameron-led British Tories -- poised to knock them off in the next election.

For a man who came to power at the head of an overwhelming Parliamentary majority, Blair must be very disappointed to look back at his time in office and see such a disappointing record.

Blair came to office as a "destined" Prime Minister, with big hopes and huge expectations to live up to. Like many such leaders, the dizzying heights of his expectations could only be matched by the dispirting depths of disappointment.

Political Doctrines Make Strange Bedfellows

Part two of Michael Cockerell's Tony Blair: The Inside Story deals with Tony Blair's foreign policy.

Like the many distinctions Blair shares with Barack Obama, Tony Blair shares an important distinction with former Prime Minister Jean Chretien -- being one of the few world leaders to have led their country from the period shortly following the disintegration of the Soviet Union (in Chretien's case, he was elected Prime Minister in the period immediately following this event) right up to the post-9/11 period and the end of the so-called Pax Americana.

As the film shows, Blair approached foreign policy matters with an activist and nearly evangelical fervour. The "Blair doctrine" was a moralist foreign policy doctrine, that demanded nearly open-ended commitment to foreign interventions so long as he was convinced it was the right thing to do.

From the fight against Slobodan Milosevic to the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Blair was able to use his considerable diplomatic skills to help build interventionist coalitions.

The religious influences on Blair's foreign policy decisions -- which were obvious from the language he used to support his policies -- were obvious. Although Blair was often unwilling to discuss his religious beliefs with the media or in public, he was willing to allow his religious values to influence his political decisions.

While overzealous secularists may condemn such influences, there is little wrong with allowing one's values to influence their decisions -- so long as those values can be shown to be largely positive.

Although Blair had once spoken about the prospect of his generation never knowing war -- apparently the Faulklands Islands don't count -- during his time in office, Blair deployed British troops to Kosovo, Sierra Leonne, Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, just as Tony Blair needed President George W Bush to help implement the Blair doctrine, Bush wound up needing Blair to help implement the Bush doctrine of preemptive engagement.

After 9/11, Blair stepped quickly to Bush's side, pledging support to the United States. Just as Bush must have known he would need Blair's diplomatic skills to build a broad anti-terror coalition, Blair must have known he would need Bush and the power of the American military in order to implement his moralistic vision of the fight against terrorism.

Yet Bush would, in turn, use Blair to carry out the war in Iraq. Blair shared a moralistic view on the war in Iraq based on the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction. Just as questions would rise over the extent of Bush's complicity in the clear manipulation of intelligence leading to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction, questions would eventually rise over the extent of Blair's knowledge of this, and his complicity in it.

Eventually, the British public failed to share Blair's moralistic view of the planned war in Iraq. Cynicism about the intelligence being used to justify the war became more widespread. Even as Blair made it evident that he at least seemed to firmly believe in the evidence being presented.

In the face of UN opposition, Blair's diplomatic skills faltered. With it disappeared any hope of garnering global support for the Bush doctrine.

Yet Blair was eventually able to essentially shame his party and the House of Parliament to back him on exercising the Blair doctrine in Iraq. Yet, if the War in Iraq truly was a defining moment of the 21st century, it was certainly a defining moment for Tony Blair.

Like George W Bush, the war in Iraq will define Tony Blair as a leader who was not immune to poor judgement. In sticking so doggedly to their foreign policy doctrines in regard to a conflict that didn't necessarily need to be fought at the time it was, both men will likely be remembered for putting more obstacles in the path of those fighting terrorism than any that they may have ever conquered.

Tony Blair and the Limits of Charisma

When Barack Obama gave his victory speech on November 4, 2009, he must have felt a lot like Tony Blair giving his victory speech on May 1, 1997.

As Michael Cockwell notes in Tony Blair: The Inside Story, Blair, like Obama, came to power amidst the corruption and incompetence of his political opposition. For Obama it was George W Bush and the Republican party. For Tony Blair it was John Major and the Conservative party of Britain.

Like Obama, Blair came to power with a tremendous mandate. Blair came to power with a Parliamentary majority greater than 200 seats. Obama came to the White House with a massive majority in the House of Representatives and a nearly filibuster-proof Senate.

Yet, just as Obama managed to break promises made about issues such as Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Blair's government quickly tarnished itself with a scandal over an exemption given to a Formula One race to Britain's laws forbidding the sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco companies.

Like Obama, Blair came to power with a gifted corps of media advisors, led by Press Secretary Alasdair Campbell. But like Obama, Blair found his ability to manage the media hampered by the modern 24-hour news cycle.

While Obama came to power with the resounding support of comedians such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Blair had enjoyed the support -- to the extent that he agreed to appear in Labour party TV spots -- of Stephen Fry.

Just like Barack Obama, Tony Blair was hailed as a "destiny" candidate. He was treated as if he were destined to be Prime Minister, just as many media commentators came to treat Barack Obama as if he were destined to be President (this even despite the alleged inevitability of Hillary Clinton!).

Yet like Obama, Blair quickly found his ability to push through his policies to be rather limited. As Obama struggles to gain traction for his health care policies, Blair stumbled over the construction of the Millenium Dome.

Just as Obama must imagine his health care reform to be integral to his legacy, Blair consiered the Millenium Dome to be centraa to his legacy -- to the extent that he even spoke of it as a "legacy" to the British media.

Like Barack Obama, the experiences of Tony Blair show how quickly the lustre can wear off of even those leaders hailed as "destined" for high office. It's a lesson that a great many prospective leaders -- regardless of however charismatic they may be -- can stand to learn.