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Pearson's diplomatic derring-do won him the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for "his powerful initiative, strength and perseverance displayed in attempting to prevent or limit war operations and restore peace." It was a high point in his career, but Suez also cost him his immunity to criticism carried over from his years as a civil servant. The time for a national election drew nigh, and Tory Howard Green, who eventually followed Pearson as External Affairs Secretary, accused him of "knifing Canada's best friends in the back" over Suez. That was the first taste that Pearson had of the blunt world of politics. Within six weeks after the Nobel award, the high point of his life turned into a low.
Morning After. The Liberals had now been in office 22 years, and had become arrogant, tired and out of touch. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was a kindly French Canadian, but ineffectual at 75. The nation began to listen to a new voice from the prairies, full of fire and Chautauqua rhetoric, John Diefenbaker, promising a fresh if vague "new vision" for Canada.
Canada woke up on the morning of June 11, 1957, startled to discover that the Liberals had fallen to second place, winning only 105 seats to Diefenbaker's 112. After five days of thinking it over, St. Laurent decided that the nation had obviously lost confidence in the Liberals, and resigned.
Seven months later, when Liberal fortunes were at their lowest ebb, the party's leadership fell to Mike Pearson. He had not fought for it, but the tax-free $38,885 Nobel Prize money had given him a small measure of financial independence, and he was willing to take a chance. He had barely begun his new job when he made an almost fatal political blunder.
On his first day in Parliament as leader, egged on by the more militant of the old Liberal pros, Pearson condemned a Conservative finance measure as wretchedly inadequate, and with uncharacteristic arrogance demanded that Diefenbaker hand over the Government without an election.
Diefenbaker rose with all the studied ire of a prosecution counsel and cut Pearson's arguments to shreds. Two weeks later, Diefenbaker called another election, and emerged from it with the most lopsided majority in Canadian history. 208 seats to the Liberals' 49. From that campaign. John Diefenbaker developed the theory, which he confidently clung to ever after, that he had an unfaltering political touch and a whammy on Lester Pearson.
Recalling his costly 1958 debut, Pearson makes no effort to shift the blame. "It was a very stupid move, and it made me look inept and incompetent just as I became leader."
In Parliament, Pearson became the bruised leader of a lonely little group. To the Liberal old guard, he was an apolitical do-gooder, with no instinct for the jugular. Pearson himself has described Opposition politicians as "the detergents of democracy," whose job it is to "cleanse and purify those in office. The good Opposition leader doesn't go around looking for belts so he may hit below them, or, on the other hand, looking for a parade merely so he may lead it."