Time & Perspective Quote by Kim Campbell

Campbell’s line lands like a polite smile with a knife behind it: she pretends she’s withholding criticism as an act of mercy, then torpedoes Lucien Bouchard with a single, dangling clause - “after all, he is a man.” The syntactic pause is the trick. It mimics the cadence of gentlemanly deference, then flips it into a gendered jab that treats “man” not as a neutral descriptor but as a shield men routinely receive in public life: the benefit of being taken seriously, or at least spared the kind of personal scrutiny women are expected to endure.

The intent is double. On the surface, it’s a quip aimed at an opponent’s “latest economic theories,” framing them as faddish or unserious. Underneath, it’s Campbell staking out a fighting posture in a political culture that had already made her gender part of the story. As Canada’s first female prime minister, she operated in a media environment that policed tone: too sharp and she’s “shrill,” too soft and she’s “weak.” The line weaponizes that trap. She delivers a punch while performing restraint, a maneuver familiar to women in power who learn to smuggle aggression inside humor.

Context matters: early-1990s Canadian politics was thick with constitutional anxiety, nationalism, and personality politics. Bouchard, a powerful Quebec figure, embodied a rival vision of the country’s future. Campbell’s remark isn’t policy argument; it’s a cultural diagnosis. It suggests that the real asymmetry in politics isn’t merely ideology - it’s who gets treated as a default human being, and who has to earn the right to be one.