Candour is not always wise when it concerns a man who is dead but not yet buried. Any criticism of Pierre Trudeau at this moment seems base. His family is in grief, his army of political friends and admirers shaken. Gushing adulation appears to be the only acceptable course.

Or so the media seem to think. There were at least six straight hours of doting retrospective Thursday on the CBC, and 12 pages of mostly fawning veneration in this national newspaper yesterday, along with 16 in the other one.

But I think it's eminently safe to say there is relatively little interest or grief when you get away from the East, and away from the competitive melodramatics of the media.

Most of us in the West bore neither love nor respect for the man who has just died in Montreal. Indeed, what's being said about him ranges between irritating and nauseating.

The assertion is being made that Mr. Trudeau was a "great" prime minister. People who say this can never explain very clearly what they mean. It seems to signify that Mr. Trudeau has always fascinated people of a certain age and attitude.

If by "great" we mean he screwed up the country more thoroughly than anyone before or since, Westerners would probably agree. But I don't think that's what his many admirers are struggling to express.

We're told, for instance, that he was a force for national unity. This despite the fact that a powerful separatist movement grew up in Quebec while he was running the country, and a second one, less mature but equally dangerous, was up and running in the West before he quit.

He was a "nation builder," we're told. He had a "vision of what Canada could be." Well, perhaps. These things are hard to quantify.

What isn't hard to count is how much federal debt he left behind. The net federal debt was $17-billion when he came in and $128-billion when he left. There was no federal deficit when he took control, and a $25-billion annual deficit by the time of his departure.

And what have we to show for it? Did we win a war? Did we build a dynamic economy? No, we spent it all on sandwich programs of infinite variety, most of which did no good and are long gone. And our children -- those who haven't moved to the United States -- are repaying it today through fruitless taxation from which they derive zero benefit.

We're told that he was a great champion of human rights and a faithful Roman Catholic. As to his faith, I can't pretend to know. But it's a fact that almost his first act was to legalize abortion, and that during his 15 years of power, about 750,000 Canadian babies were killed. Such a champion of human rights, Mr. Trudeau. And how very, very Catholic.

Similarly, we are forever hearing what a frighteningly deep intellect he had. Long ago, I actually tried to read some of his earlier writing. It was a waste of effort. His jottings were disorganized, superficial, long on jargon and short on thought, and dreadfully, dreadfully dull.

As far as I have ever been able to tell, Pierre Trudeau had three assets: cleverness, style and nerve. In short, he was an actor. He could act like an intellectual, or a lover, or a statesman, or a brawler, and a huge audience followed along, relishing his every word, gesture and hat. In this sense, he was "great." It was this quality that captivated such widespread attention.

Behind that mask, however, he was moody, inconsistent, glib, arrogant and shallow.

Parliament annoyed him, so he bulldozed his Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the Constitution and surrendered statutory supremacy to the Supreme Court.

Quebec nationalism annoyed him, so he invoked the War Measures Act against a small insurgency known to and traceable through an ordinary police force. The price we paid for that stunt was the election of René Lévesque.

Finance annoyed him, so he spent us into a multi-generational national debt.

English Canada annoyed him, so he expanded official bilingualism everywhere across the country except in Quebec, and accused those who objected of racism.

He seemed to have the mind of a dictator, not a democrat. He was fascinated by the cold-blooded determination of the Chinese Communists. He was once overheard by reporters remarking to Fidel Castro how much quicker and easier it would be to run things the Cuban way. Democracy is clumsy, public and messy, and Mr. Trudeau was graceful, private, elitist and fussy.

So was he a great prime minister? Who cares what we think? It doesn't matter to him -- never did, in fact -- and whatever we say today has no bearing on the verdict of history. So let's get on with life, and not blame him for his mistakes. Assume he meant well. Dust to dust. The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Link Byfield is publisher of the Report Newsmagazine.