Chretien Riding Wave of Popularity Playing Canada’s Everyman : Politics: When Clinton arrives on first official visit, he could take a lesson in how to win over the populace.

It was the kind of faux pas disastrous to some politicians--or one that could, at minimum, assure ridicule for months.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien was visiting Canadian troops on U.N. peacekeeping duty in the former Yugoslav federation last June when he was photographed striding purposefully through the ranks--wearing his regulation blue helmet backward.

The gaffe, however, only seemed to endear the popular Chretien further to the Canadian public. Not long afterward, his approval rating hit 75% in some polls.

When President Clinton arrives here Thursday on his first official visit to Canada, he might be forgiven some envy of his host--a slim, unpretentious man with a face weathered by his 61 Canadian winters.

Sixteen months after winning election with about the same percentage of the popular vote as Clinton got in 1992, Chretien is riding a wave of personal popularity unprecedented in modern Canadian history. Canada’s economy is growing faster than that of any other industrialized nation, and Chretien’s opponents are in such disarray that some pundits refer to Canada as a one-party state.

“They just seem to be two opposites; Mr. Clinton can do nothing right and Mr. Chretien can do no wrong,” said Michael Bliss, a University of Toronto history professor and author of “Right Honorable Men,” a recent study of Canada’s prime ministers.

But Bliss, and many others, believe that popularity will be severely tested this year, beginning almost as soon as Clinton leaves town.

At the end of the month, Chretien’s finance minister, Paul Martin, will present a new national budget pledged to restrain Canada’s runaway deficit. Martin is expected to cut cherished government programs and increase taxes.

Later this year, Chretien must defeat a referendum in his native province of Quebec calling for a declaration of independence from Canada. For Chretien, a fierce, lifelong defender of Canadian national unity, the referendum presents the potential ignominy of presiding over the crackup of the country he loves.

Those anticipating a fall, however, might be surprised. Chretien has been baffling the experts for most of his career. In more than 30 years in politics, his unsophisticated style and “just folks” demeanor often have obscured a relentless ambition and shrewdly calculated political instincts.

“I’ve been wrong about him all along,” acknowledged University of Toronto professor Stephen Clarkson, a leading historian and political biographer. “He’s been consistently underestimated. That’s been a pattern with him.”

The conventional explanation for Chretien’s unflagging popularity--despite a modest record of legislative achievement--is the carefully cultivated contrast he presents with Brian Mulroney, the near-universally reviled Progressive Conservative who was prime minister for nine years before resigning in February, 1993.

Mulroney liked limousine motorcades and lavish entertainment, ordered an Air Force One-style jet and governed amid a fog of scandal. Chretien favors Chevrolets and nights at home with Aline, his wife of 37 years; he mothballed the big plane, and his integrity is unquestioned.

Mulroney buddied up to the Americans and shared a summit stage with then-President Ronald Reagan in 1985 to harmonize on “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” Chretien keeps the United States at as much distance as is practical and lobs the occasional verbal grenade southward to the cheers of Canadian nationalists.

“Every time you see him, there’s a symbolic sign around his neck: ‘I’m not Brian Mulroney; I’m an honest guy trying to do a decent job,’ ” Bliss said.

And in fact, the differences are largely symbolic. On most major issues, Chretien’s Liberals are following much the same course as Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives, a sign of Chretien’s flexible pragmatism.

Michael Marzolini, chairman of Insight Canada Research in Toronto and pollster for the Liberal Party, argued that “not Mulroney” is a superficial explanation of the prime minister’s appeal. Chretien has forged an almost psychic bond with the average Canadian, he said.

“He is reflecting . . . what Canadians want to see in themselves--an honest, family-values, middle-class Canadian.”

(Chretien’s family is not without its problems. Son Michel, 26, last week began a three-year prison term for sexual assault. Michel was adopted by the Chretiens as a child but recently has lived with his birth mother in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The Chretiens have two other children.)

James Blanchard, the former Michigan governor who is ambassador to Canada, described Chretien as “very much in tune with what the times require in Canada--a humble man, but smart; a man with solid roots, but experienced in the political wars; an understated leader . . . who is truly genuine and not too smooth or slick.”

The tales of Chretien and Aline slipping their bodyguards to take in a movie at a neighborhood theater in Ottawa may be apocryphal, but the point is that Canadians believe he’s the kind of guy who’d turn up in the popcorn line next to them. His speeches are shot through with scrambled syntax and sentence fragments--opponents gibe that he is inarticulate in two languages--but voters apparently find his trademark patriotic bromides irresistibly sincere.

He’s certainly had time to grow on them. In an era when politicians seem to emerge from obscurity like shooting stars--and often last about as long--Chretien is the anomaly. He was first elected to Parliament at age 29, when John F. Kennedy was President and Reagan was a declining movie star. He has held 10 Cabinet posts under three previous prime ministers.

Chretien seemingly was born and bred to the life. His father was a Liberal Party activist and his grandfather a small-town mayor in Quebec.

The 18th of 19 children, only nine of whom survived infancy, Chretien grew up in Shawinigan, a drab factory town in upcountry Quebec. Home to a fading aluminum industry and surrounding farms, it’s the kind of place where, during the fall hunting season, pickup trucks cruise the streets with the heads of decapitated moose strapped to the hoods.

Chretien, who overcame a birth defect that left him deaf in one ear and with a partly paralyzed face, is fond of describing himself as “ le p’tit gars de Shawinigan “: “the little guy from Shawinigan.” This country-boy-amid-city slickers routine, moderated since he became prime minister, has served him well with voters in his district but always has grated on urbane French-speaking Quebeckers, who think it plays to French-Canadian “hick” stereotypes.

For example, it took former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, an intellectual loner, some time to appreciate the value of Chretien. In their two-volume biography of Trudeau, historian Clarkson and Christina McCall recount a long plane ride in which Trudeau and Chretien sat side by side. Trudeau studied papers silently for hours while Chretien stared uncomfortably out the window. Finally, as the plane began its descent, Chretien ventured, “It’s raining outside.”

Trudeau shot him a withering glance and replied, “If it’s raining, it must be outside.”

But Chretien’s perseverance and undeniable political street smarts eventually won him a place as a top Trudeau lieutenant, if not an intimate friend. In 1980, Trudeau handed Chretien the important job of directing the day-to-day campaign against a Quebec referendum on separation. The referendum was defeated 60% to 40%.

As justice minister, Chretien also was crucial to Trudeau’s historic effort to write a new constitution for Canada, including a Charter of Rights and Freedoms similar to the U.S. Bill of Rights.

The constitution was adopted by the Parliament in 1982 with the assent of every province except Quebec. The Quebec provincial Parliament continues to refuse to endorse the constitution because it contains no special rights for the country’s only predominantly French-speaking province, and Chretien still has not been forgiven by many Quebeckers for his role in the negotiations.

Pollster Marzolini conceded, “He’s as high in the current polls as you can get . . . except in the province of Quebec, where there’s some room for improvement.”

This complicates Chretien’s position in the upcoming Quebec referendum on independence, which could be as early as May or June. The burden of leading the opposition instead may fall to Daniel Johnson, the Liberal Party leader in Quebec.

With polls forecasting a defeat for the separatists similar to 1980, however, Chretien and Johnson may not have to do much more than avoid mistakes.

The fiscal situation in Canada, which carries a public debt rate that exceeds every other economic power except Italy, presents more difficulty. Chretien is sandwiched between international investors squeezing the Canadian dollar and demanding tough-minded deficit reduction and voters nervous about cutting programs such as unemployment benefits, universal health care, low-cost college education and cultural subsidies.

The budget thus presents Chretien with just the sort of risky choices he usually avoids.

“What they (the Liberal government) did in the first year was sit around and see what turned up, and the economy turned up and that was a great plus for them,” historian Bliss said. “It’s still unclear whether they’ll make the hard decisions.”

Chretien can’t suggest he is being stymied by strong opposition in Parliament. His Liberals hold 177 seats and the Progressive Conservatives, the Liberal’s historic national opposition, just two. The main opposition is fragmented into two regional parties, the separatist Bloc Quebecois from Quebec, with 53 seats, and the populist-conservative Reform Party, with nearly all its 52 members from western Canada.

Chretien and his defenders argue that he’s on track, and that the first task for the Liberals was rebuilding public confidence in government after the erosion of the Mulroney era.

“It’s been a case of not squandering political capital on small issues, but saving it for the big ones,” Marzolini said.

Not that Chretien is setting his sights too high. In an interview with Maclean’s newsmagazine at the end of last year, Chretien summarized his ambitions with typical modesty:

“I am not reaching for the spectacular. I don’t spend a lot of time dreaming about my place in history. I would like to be a competent prime minister.”

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Profile: Jean Chretien

Background on the Canadian prime minister:

Personal: Born Jan. 11, 1934, in Shawinigan, Quebec, to Wellie and Marie Boisvert Chretien, the 18th of 19 children. Law school graduate of Laval University in Quebec City. He and wife Aline have a daughter, France, and two sons, Hubert and Michel.

Career: Elected to Parliament in April, 1963. Held 10 cabinet positions 1967-1984 under prime ministers Lester Pearson, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and John Turner. Ran for the Liberal Party leadership in 1984 and lost to Turner. Retired from politics in 1986 and practiced law in Toronto. Comeback bid for Liberal Party leadership was successful in 1990. Elected prime minister Oct. 25, 1993 when his Liberal Party won 177 of 295 seats in Parliament. His 1985 memoir “Straight From the Heart” was a Canadian best seller. He updated it following his election as Prime Minister.

Quote: “I’ve been teased for talking all the time about the greatness of Canada. But if we don’t have pride, we will never be able to succeed. And that is why I will continue to say, as long as God gives me life and a chance to serve my country: Canada is the best!”