I just finished reading Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada by William Johnson, and earlier this month read Think Big by Preston Manning (for the record, I have also read The New Canada, also by Manning).

I was intrigued by the differing portrayals of the tensions between Harper and Manning.

In Think Big, Manning portrays Harper as a big ego, who couldn't be trusted to be a team player if he wasn't, essentially "getting his own way". In his defense, Manning offers his criticism in what he insists is intended to be a constructive manner.

Meanwhile, Johnson's book portrays Manning as a political neophyte, whose disdain for the traditional operations of the political process combined with pure naivete to limit his effectiveness as a leader.

Johnson essentially portrays Harper as seeking to build a Blue Tory movement within the Reform Party. It's clear that Harper did not share Manning's enthusiasm for pure populist politics. Johnson also tries to accredit the leadership of the Reform party more to Harper than Manning, all while noting a number of details that Manning omitted from his book -- namely, that Harper was also pursuing his master's degree in economics while being involved with the Reform party and, later, the Canada West Foundation.

Before I continue any deeper, does anyone have any thoughts?

I just read Paul Wells new book, Right Side Up: The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism, and I am currently reading Full Circle: A Conservative Revolution, and it truly illustrates what an idiot Preston Manning truly was.

Before creating the Reform Party, Manning made no attempt whatsoever to influence the Brian Mulroney government. He never wanted to work with the Progressive Conservatives - his goal was to establish a party very similar to the Social Credit Party, but more grassroots. He wanted to create a western populist party.

The ironic thing about that, however, is that the Reform Party did not even choose it's own policies. Preston Manning wrote them on the back of a napkin right before the convention. This obvously goes against the principles of populism, and it really effectively shows how Preston Manning was out for no one but himself.

The most ironic thing about Reform is that it was possibly the most top-down party in its era. Manning had control over everything. He never truly was a populist - he just liked to pretend he was. Take for example how he turned down a limousine when Reform came into being in 1993, but then once he won the Leader of the Official Opposition, he turned around and accepted not only the keys to Stornoway on the taxpayers dime, but also took a limousine with it. He had a $31,000 clothing expense on the Reform Party's dime. Clearly, the man wanted nothing but the infamy of being the leader of a populist party, and he got it.

Preston Manning singehandedly destroyed the Conservative movement for a decade, and he might have destroyed it for longer than that. The man deserves no respect, no admiration, nothing. All he deserves is to be shunned from the Conservative Party of Canada.

On the contrary: Preson Manning rebuilt the Conservative movement. It is only through the merger of one of Manning's creations: the Canadian Alliance (formed by combining his other creation, the Reform Party, with provincial Progressive Conservatives) with the federal Progressive Conservatives that it is even possible for those alientated by Brian Mulroney to support the Conservative party again.