The prime minister would no doubt argue that he is not vain, but rather he is conscious that he is unique

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It has been curious to watch Prime Minister Mark Carney’s parade of year-end interviews while reading Paul Litt’s excellent 2011 biography of former prime minister John Turner: Elusive Destiny.

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Many of Turner’s qualities, as noted by journalist Ron Graham in a Saturday Night magazine profile ahead of the 1984 Liberal leadership election, could equally be said of Carney.

“(Turner’s) personality is a methodically achieved balance between his obsessive fears of failure or making a mistake, and his heroic conceits about his ability to influence people and get things done. His fears are tested constantly by his ambition, his assumption of superiority and the expectations of others, but any arrogance is checked at once by his insecurity, his sensitivity to criticism and the humility ingrained by his Roman Catholic faith.”

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Both Right Honourable men were accused of being business-oriented politicians who abandoned natural Liberal constituencies on the left. But while Turner’s leadership was undermined by one mutiny after another, Carney has, thus far, faced remarkably little gravitational pull from the left.

The parallels only go so far.

Turner had a vexed relationship with his caucus, the media and voters, some of which Litt suggests may have originated in the Liberal leader’s sense that he deserved a certain degree of deference and should not have to work for it.

To this point, Carney has lived a charmed life with all three........

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