KINSELLA: No more Mr. Nice Guy, Carney reveals his true personality

What are they really like?

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When you are a political staffer — like this writer was, back in the Palaeolithic Era — you get that question a lot. People find out that you work for a notable politician, and they want to know the real deal: What is he/she like when the microphones and cameras are tucked away?

Mark Carney first.

On Monday, the newly-minted Liberal leader was asked totally legitimate questions about his “blind trust” by the CBC’s Rosemary Barton and the Globe’s Stephanie Levitz. Barton and Levitz essentially wanted to know why Carney didn’t disclose his financial holdings when he could have.

Levitz went first, querying Carney about the whereabouts of his millions. Carney’s response: “What possible conflict would you have, Stephanie? … Point final.”

Get that? “Point final.” That’s kind of the English equivalent of saying, in French, “This discussion is over, child.”

Barton wasn’t deterred by that. She said it “was very difficult to believe” Carney could have no possible conflicts of interest. At that point, Carney’s patrician mask fully slipped. “Look inside yourself, Rosemary,” he actually said. You are “trying to invent new rules,” he snapped at her. You are acting with “ill will,” he barked at the CBC veteran broadcaster.

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Well, no. She was just doing her job. But in those few seconds, Carney revealed himself to be arrogant, pompous, evasive and condescending. He looked terrible — all that was missing was him gnawing at an apple.

The reconstituted TruAnon cult sprinted to his defence — possible new appellations for the Liberal winged monkeys: Mark-eteers, Mark-anon, The Central Bank Cult, Team Goldman or (my personal favourite) The Carnvoy — and slimed Barton and Levitz and all of the news media for the impertinence of asking their deity, you know, questions. But the damage had been done.

Damaging, because reliable stories have been circulating in Ottawa for days that Carney — while pointedly charming in public, in a debutantes-ball Michael Ignatieff/John Kerry canapés-and-caviar sort of way — has been decidedly different in private. The way in which he talked down to Barton and Levitz? That, we are told, is how Carney has been with myriad cabinet ministers, caucus members, candidates and staff. Firings, insults, superciliousness. As in: Not nice.

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The paradox, here, is Pierre Poilievre. In public, as everyone knows by now, the Conservative leader has carefully crafted the public persona of a Class-A jerk. Prickly, pompous, petulant. It has hurt him, and it is now way too late to recalibrate.

The irony is this: For years, this writer has been hearing from legions of people — not just Conservatives — who have detailed personal stories about how different the private Poilievre is from the public one. Thoughtful, considerate, wholly devoted to constituents and regular folks. Not a pompous snob, in other words.

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Why doesn’t he show that side of him? You got me. But he’s not alone. Poilievre’s political hero is Stephen Harper, who could sometimes be the same way.

Way back when, Yours Truly was a Liberal Attack Dog™ and chewing at Harper’s pant leg at every opportunity in the media. Then, suddenly, my dad was dying. The phone rang: It was Stephen Harper. He spoke to me for a while about dads, and then he told me to put my mother on the line, and he talked to her for half an hour while my mother wept. That’s how the private Stephen Harper was: A good man.

Jean Chretien, my former boss? He could be tough — there was that little incident with a good-natured strangulation on Parliament Hill one Flag Day, it was in all the papers — but I can attest: How he was in public was how he was in private. Courteous, folksy, disdainful of snobs. Tough, yes. But no different when the klieg lights were turned off.

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Brian Mulroney? Possessed of a volcanic temper, like all Irishmen, but kind. When one of Chretien’s family got in some trouble, Mulroney called me. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of it,” he said. “So just tell him Mila and I are praying for him and his family OK?” OK.

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John Turner? Old school. Respectful. But could swear like a sailor in private. Joe Clark? My folks were at a dinner with him, one time. He got up and served my mom when she asked for something to drink. He didn’t have to do that, being a prime minister and all. Justin Trudeau? Ask any of the guys who drive the green buses on Parliament Hill, and they’ll all say the same thing about Justin Trudeau: “He’s always the nicest MP.”

And now, in 2025, we are all judging two new leaders, locked in a battle for power. One, the Liberal, seems rather nice in public, but is reportedly far less so in private. The other, the Conservative, who regularly exhibits a bad temper — but isn’t at all like that when no one is looking.

Why don’t they just be themselves? Again, good question. It’s a puzzle.

The Irish writer Oscar Wilde had some great advice for politicians, here, which too many of them disregard:

Be yourself, guys. Everyone else is taken.

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