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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
The analysis of political leadership is an enterprise often handicapped by the lack of an adequate conceptual framework. Mr Courtney has selected James Barber's model of presidential character as a means of overcoming this problem and has presented an interesting examination of Mackenzie King's political leadership based on this approach. There are, however, a number of aspects both of the Barber model and of Mackenzie King's leadership that Courtney has been unable to develop. It is proposed in this brief rejoinder to discuss some of these issues and to indicate the main lines of an alternative interpretation of Mr King's character.
1 The main lines of this interpretation have been drawn from a full-scale psychobiography of Mackenzie King presented in a doctoral dissertation in the Department of Political Economy, University of Toronto, in 1974. The author wishes to thank the literary executors for access to the family papers in the W.L. Mackenzie King collection (Public Archives of Canada).
2 Identity, Youth and Crisis (New York 1968), Identity and the Life Cycle (New York 1960), Childhood and Society (Middlesex 1965)
3 Dawson, R. MacGregor, William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Political Biography, 1874–1923 (Toronto 1958)Google Scholar
4 W.L.M.K. to family, 30 January 1898
5 W.L.M.K. to family, 6 February 1898
6 W.L.M.K. Diary, 29 September 1897
7 See, for example, W.L.M.K. to family, 10 October 1897
8 The author's subjective estimate based on extensive reading of the diary and family correspondence is that the conflicting elements are more predominant.
9 Barber, James D., “Classifying and Predicting Presidential Styles: Two ‘weak’ Presidents,” Journal of Social Issues XXIV (1968), 61Google Scholar
10 Diary, 26 July 1900
11 W.L.M.K. to family, 5 August 1900
12 Dawson, King, 115
13 W.L.M.K. to Taussig, 18 April 1904
14 The Age of Mackenzie King: The Rise of the Leader (London 1955), 56
15 Dawson, King, 109–12
16 W.L.M.K. to family, 4 November 1900
17 Barber, “Classifying and Predicting,” 52–3
18 W.L.M.K. to Larkin, 2 December 1925
19 Diary, 7 February 1936
20 W.L.M.K. to V. Markham, 1 February 1937
21 W.L.M.K. to J. Buchan, 7 April 1937
22 Diary, 7 January 1936
23 Diary, 14 November 1937
24 Diary, 14 January 1936
25 Diary, 4 January 1936
26 Horney, K., Our Inner Conflicts (New York 1970), 27Google Scholar
27 Diary, 7 November 1937
