All is well in Liberal Canada. The Toronto media, in particular, is almost drunk with joy, unable to believe its good fortune: Saint Dalton as Premier, Saint David as Mayor (technically a New Democrat, but it's the same team, isn't it?), and now Saint Paul as prime minister, all within the space of six weeks. Columnists for rival newspapers race to see who can produce the most approving adjectives for the newly installed, anxious only that their praise be worthy of their subjects. The CBC, sensitive to its public service mandate, offers gavel to gavel coverage of Justin Trudeau's dimples.

But the media were critical of Jean Chretien, you protest. That much is true: but always for the wrong reasons, and at the wrong time. The same people who, looking back on his career, sing of his wisdom in passing the Clarity Act "against the advice of detractors" were themselves foremost among the advising detractors. The same people who note, with a sad shake of the head, that his later ethical failings came to overshadow his achievements were themselves the first to overlook those ethical failings at the time.

History will record that when Mr. Chretien was closing the constitutional "general store" and corralling the secession question within the rule of law, the media was universally hysterical in its condemnation. Indeed, it was fashionable opinion as long ago as 1997 that Mr. Chretien, having just won his second majority, should resign in favour of Mr. Martin, the better to "win the next referendum." But when, as his second term drew to a close, the Shawinigan bog began to envelop him, the same sages who savaged him over Quebec dismissed the scandal as a nonstory, a Parliament Hill affair.

So the verdict on Mr. Chretien is necessarily mixed. It always is.

People are inclined to paint their prime ministers in black and white: Trudeau good, Mulroney bad, or vice versa. I cannot see how this is possible. Each of our recent prime ministers, rather, has one or two towering achievements to his credit, bright flashes of lightning amid an otherwise unbroken haze of cronyism and decrepitude. Trudeau patriated the Constitution, complete with Charter of Rights. Mulroney brought us free trade and the GST, and oversaw the conquest of inflation. And Chretien? Merely brought to heel the two problems that had consumed this country since I was a child, the deficit and separatism.

It is nonsense to speak of him as a caretaker. That surely was his goal -- to be as inconsequential as, say, Bill Clinton -- and certainly it was the image it suited him to project, but events conspired to force him to act boldly on these two fronts, after caution had ceased to be an option. To be sure, the initiative in neither case was his own: the late Reform party could claim much of the credit. And in each case he had help: from John Crow, Alan Greenspan and Paul Martin in the first, from Stephane Dion, the Supreme Court, and a grossly miscalculating Lucien Bouchard in the second. But it was Mr. Chretien who had the political touch to know where the opposition was firm, and where it was soft, and to press his advantage the minute he felt an opening.

He never explained his aims, or expounded on his beliefs, which maddened those of us with a vested interest in discussing aims and beliefs, but was probably harmless in itself. What was worse was what he did to our collective political judgment. It isn't just that he allowed himself to be underestimated: he lowered the bar by which all politicians are assessed. An "underestimated" politician talks in incoherent sentence fragments, and is mocked for it. A master politician like Mr. Chretien knocks the very notion of coherence out of the park.

It is useless to complain that Mr. Chretien was illogical, for example, in warning the opposition not to raise questions about Shawinigan because "this is the sort of cynicism that gives rise to a Jean Marie le Pen." That is only a valid complaint so long as logic remains an applicable criterion. But since it so plainly was not to Mr. Chretien, in time it ceased to be to the public. This systematic undermining of expectations was more or less his signature. The same insouciant philosophy that informed Mr. Chretien's approach to most policy questions -- do not be seen to try, and you will not be seen to fail -- also came to apply to ethical matters: do not be seen to feel guilt, and you will not be found guilty.

That is the other constant between Mr. Chretien and his predecessors: not only the big things they did right, but the overarching decline in ethical standards, the steady erosion of democratic norms and practices. Mr. Chretien's government did not mark a break in this regard from Mr. Mulroney's: it was of a piece, as Mr. Mulroney's resembled Mr. Trudeau's. Perhaps each man justified this disregard for honourable behaviour in light of the great problems each was called upon to solve. But now that the justificatory ends have receded as public concerns, all that remains are the means: the democratic deficit, the ethical recession.

Will Mr. Martin's government depart from its predecessors' habitual abuse of the public trust? Does the ascension of Mr.

Martin mark the end of Liberal machine politics? That is the criterion by which his premiership should be judged. But first we must agree that it is, indeed, a criterion.