Conservatives the bright spot for Liberals

By Don Martin
Canwest News Service

Image from the Conservative Party website with a puffin defecating on Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. (Canwest News Service)

ABOARD THE LIBERAL LEADER'S TOUR - He didn't see it coming. And when the poop hit, Stephane Dion didn't immediately recognize it as a gift from the election enemy.

But the Liberal leader had a quick recovery when asked for his reaction to being the three-time target of a digital puffin's bowel movements in a now-infamous Conservative attack ad. 

"This is saying more about them than about us," he fumed at the surprise revelation. He paused. A light went on in his bleary, early-morning eyes. He'd spotted the opportunity for a clean shot at Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And he took it.

"I want to clarify by saying it's not about them, but about him, because I know that most Conservative voters last time will disagree with that."

Nice. 

As Dion's Liberal tour wanders southern Ontario in a trio of buses, searching with limited success for decent campaign opportunities, there's no small irony in seeing the Conservatives become their only bright spot.

There's not a bookie on the planet who would've accepted a bet on Stephen Harper apologizing for an Internet puffin dumping on Dion within 72 hours of an election call.

This, after all, is the same Stephen Harper, albeit now dressed in soft blue sweaters, who refused an apology opportunity when his 2004 election war room kicked out a press release suggesting rival Paul Martin supported child pornography.

And while we can't lose sight of the controversy being little more than a low-level prankster's unauthorized insertion on a website for Tory faithful, the incident is insightful on many levels.

It shows that Stephen Harper - whose 2004 or 2006 incarnations would've crawled over broken glass before agreeing to baby-cuddling photo-ops, owning up to party staff errors or describing himself as more like a "sweet and colourful" fruit than a vegetable to a trick question - will do anything to sell his new-found folksy friendliness. One wag calls it the Bobby Ewing strategy because it's like waking up to discover Harper in a shower and learning that an entire term of testy testosterone was all a bad dream.

It also underscores how almost low things can go in a campaign where discrediting the other guy is more important than selling yourself. That's why Dion picked the perfect time to introduce an innocuously corny ad highlighting his sports and fishing prowess, the better to bury the image of an egghead who would need help hooking a worm. 

And, finally, it proves the Yertl the Turtle theory - that the smallest at the bottom of a stack of turtles (in this case, the anonymous puffin computer programmer) can knock the king turtle off his lofty perch and into the mud. 

But enough of this . . . um . . . crap. 

The puffin would have flown off the public radar to little lasting consequence if it weren't the only Conservative oopsie putting a smile on Liberal faces in a limp-along, bus-driven campaign even insiders charitably describe as "unique". 

Enter Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader ousted from what will certainly be a low-rated, English-language leaders' debate held the same night as the U.S. vice-presidential showdown. 

While three parties objected to her participation, the Conservatives wear the blackest hats because it was Stephen Harper's her-or-me ultimatum that forced the networks to rule against May. They correctly figured there's no point having a debate without the incumbent leader whose record is the ballot box question.

But as the only party leader to endorse the Green leader's participation, Dion claims the moral high ground as a free-speech defender, and polishes his credentials for women voters, even though a stellar Elizabeth May performance risks draining support away from the Liberals.

While his oft-mangled English is still a valid concern for voters formulating their impressions of the rookie leader, the Conservative missteps have handed Dion many opportunities to ooze sincere integrity in front of the cameras. 

The anti-green optics of the Conservative diesel fuel tax cut, its backroom trashing of the Liberals over daycare (when Dion's plan seems far more lucrative to child-care parents), and the prime minister's bizarre "rather be a fruit" response when asked to pick a vegetable he'd like to be, enhanced the sudden reversal of fortunes for the Liberals. 

Now, every good day is a sunrise away from turning bad while on the campaign trail. But a Liberal team that dreaded the dawn of a soggy Tuesday with no positive potentials on the horizon entered Ontario with a leader's bus full of pinch-me-I'm-dreaming happy faces.

For that, they have only the Conservatives to thank.