Unhappy anniversary.

TO UNDERSTAND what Brian Mulroney and his Tories have done in one year since winning the most impressive mandate in Canadian political history, recall the Boston Red Sox of 1978. The Sox had a 14-1/2-game lead on the Yankees in August. They blew it, and the Yankees went on to win the World Series. That memorable collapse is a fair comparison with the disaster now unfolding here.

Only six months ago, Mulroney stood even taller in the polls than on September 4, 1984, when he carried every province in the country on the way to an awesome landslide. The Liberals, Canada's majority party for the last sixty years, not only had been annihilated federally, but for the first time ever were not in power in any provincial government. Flushed with success, Tories everywhere talked of a new national realignment.

That sudden onset of hubris from a party of traditional bridesmaids now seems too laughable to be tragic. The federal Tories' once-commanding lead in the polls has shrunk to the toss-up range. Although provincial and federal political loyalties frequently diverge, Mulroney has to be scared by recent provincial developments. In Ontario, where the Tories had been in power for 42 straight years, a confident Tory majority government loafed through its campaign for this spring's election. Down twenty points in the polls at the start, the Liberals fought hard, astonishing even themselves by gaining power in a minority government backed by the socialist New Democratic Party. In Quebec, the Parti Quebecois, riven by ideological strife and tied to the nowmoribund idea of leaving Canadian confederation, trails the provincial Liberals in the polls, with an election due soon. In New Brunswick, the reigning Tories face electoral defeat next year as Premier Richard Hatfield refuses resignation demands arising from personal drug scandals.

In addition to worrying about provincial trends, Mulroney has to feel panicky when he contemplates the sudden end of his honeymoon with the electorate--an annulment on the grounds of nonconsummation. The voters demanded change, and demanded it massively. Pierre Trudeau's ruling principles had been handouts at home, and hands off abroad when it came to NATO responsibilities. Mulroney promised a society based on entrepreneurial initiative, a control on runaway government spending, and an end to the Yankee-baiting and neutralism that had passed for foreign policy. He reveled in his relationship with Reagan, a friendship that led to the spring Shamrock Summit at Quebec climaxing in a duet of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."

That show was the high point for the Tories. Since then, it's been downhill all the way.

Their first budget looked promising, draped as it was in rightist rhetoric, although it still scheduled a deficit of Trudeauesque proportions. Its courage came in a commitment to remove part of the automatic inflation indexing on the universal old-age pensions. The first 3 per cent annual increase in the Consumer Price Index would not be offset for pensioners, so there would be, in effect, a deductible. With inflation down around 4 per cent, that policy would, within the life of this government, have sharply slashed the cost of one of Ottawa's biggest spending programs. It would also have represented a gutsy first step toward controlling the universal handout schemes lying at the core of the nation's fiscal crisis. (Canada's deficits in relation to GNP are about twice as grim as the United States'.)

INITIAL REACTION to Finance Minister Michael Wilson's budget was generally favorable. Most Canadians understood that only a willingness to address the costs of major social programs could slow the nation's downward spiral. However, containment of pension costs was clearly a sensitive issue, and the opposition bit venomously on this "attack on the helpless." A national storm soon seemed to develop. I say "seemed" because although the media shrilled about protest meetings, tearful speeches, telegrams to Ottawa, and other evidence of outrage, few Tory MPs found anything more than isolated, ritualistic fury. Mulroney, however, whose dislike of being disliked had long ago been tabbed by Tory doubters as his big weakness, overruled his finance minister. The result was humiliation in the House of Commons for Wilson, outright victory for the outnumbered opposition, and widespread voter disenchantment. People who had regarded pensions as inviolable gave the opposition credit for the volte-face, and those who had hoped for strong leadership mourned. They also began to notice the government's spinelessness on other issues.

For example, after ignoring Central America for decades, Ottawa sent a cabinet minister to Nicaragua and encouraged the Sandinistas to open a trade office in Canada for an end-run around the American boycott. After promising a clean-up of the bloated and interventionist civil service, Mulroney slashed no jobs and kept key Trudeau supporters in top posts. Despite firm pledges of a free vote in the House on capital punishment, Mulroney continues to defer the issue, knowing it would lead to both reimposition of the rope, and outraged newspaper editorials.

A committee set up to consider Canadian participation in Star Wars was stacked with opponents. Its cross-Canada public hearings found time for nearly every leftist and appeasement group, while rationing anti-Communist representation severely. Although a national poll reported that 53 per cent of Canadians favored involvement in the SDI, the carefully manipulated "attempt to get public input" was used to suggest that support was a minority position.

At the Shamrock Summit, Mulroney and Reagan pledged themselves to work for free trade between their nations, whose trade with each other already outpaces their trade with any other countries in the world. That remains the Reagan position, despite a groundswell of protectionism in Congress. Mulroney now waffles, responding to protest from self-styled "Canadian nationalists," who wailt that free trade will mean an American takeover. These defenders of Canada turn out to be the same groups that oppose Canadian defense expenditures, since the latter are directed toward NATO and implicitly against the Soviets.

Having abandoned the causes and constituencies that won him the Tory leadership over the liberal Joe Clark, Mulroney now seems intent on abandoning also the majority of voters who wanted a realistic, pragmatic approach. Joe Clark lost his brief hold on power through being indistinguishable from the Liberals. Those who assumed Mulroney had learned from that pitiful performance feel more than just disappointment. In the past month, I've talked to dozens of Tory loyalists, from all branches of the party. Without exception, they blame Mulroney for the current malaise.

After years in the desert, the Tories were only too ready to embrace a leader who promised to part the Red Sea. They may not stay loyal long to a prophet whose ideas of friendly compromise extend to equal time for Ra and Jehovah. That distant dust is getting closer.