Financial Post, Weekly edition, Thu 27 Jul 95, page 11

TWO LEADERS - Tn to a lengthy interview.

He had been personally kind to me on a long-ago occasion. I had roughed him up seriously in the election campaign, and therefore thought the jury would be still out.

He said sure. In his prime minister'snd understanding of the true values of the voters.''

Instead, he immediately said, ''Having watched in Parliament six prime ministers,'' (he meant Pearson, Trudeau, Clark, Trudeau again, Turner, Mulroney, Campbell), ''I learned someth American official - who is close to Bill Clinton and has gotten to know Chretien well - talked over a drink about the two leaders. While Clinton obviously is the intellectual superior, the American said, ''He could learn a lot about politt after reading how many cabinet positions he had held, ''I wondered if the guy could ever keep a job.''

The other reason is that Clinton talks too much, a weakness he is only now struggling to cure. It's interesting to observe how each oidates who are scrapping to see how they can garner the support of the religious right and the bash-the-minorities movement.

In the Chretien scene, it is the Republican North in the guise of the Reform party on the one hand, and the separ action as ''discriminatory'' - hello there, Fingerprint Mike - in his desperate bid for the Republican nomination.

In his response to the same mood in the right wing of Canadian politics, Chretien goes to the Calgary Stampede and embarpting to convince Americans to ignore the ''wedge issues'' that divide his country and instead look to the ''web issues'' that bind citizens together.

Chretien's weapon is mainly silence. He knows his Quebec sources and knew that in t repeat the allegations. And the Montreal media speculating about Lobster Jack's return to his well-known taste for fine wine.

Clinton's inexperience in foreign affairs is spotlighted by the head-shaking farce in Bosnia. Canadian papersemonstrate to Quebec voters that he alone spoke for Canada and that the little guy from Shawinigan could cut it on the diplomatic big circuit.

The result? As even the separatists admit, the polls showing that his stature in Quebec hasH=468>
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