The Ottawa Sun, November 19, 2000, Sunday,  Pg. C3,

HEADLINE: NICE GUYS FINISH LAST

BYLINE: RICK GIBBONS, OTTAWA SUN

    Say what you will about the down-and-dirty street tactics of the
Liberals, they know how to win a scrap. They've been doing it successfully
for the better part of a century.

    You can moan and complain all you want about the cheap tactics, the
low blows and the general unfairness of it all. But at the end of the day,
it's the Liberals who will easily survive this campaign because they know
that elections aren't a Sunday picnic, they're a street brawl and you
never, ever send an altar boy to engage in one.

      Why else do you think the slick Grits were so anxious to risk a
majority barely three years into a term. To rationally debate Liberal
policy on taxes and health care? To test voter support for their spotty
record on just about everything else? To hand Canadians a de facto
referendum on the billion- dollar boondoggle?

    Nonsense.

    They detected a huge weakness in their opponent they knew they could
exploit by going to the polls early, regardless of their own record. And,
in the world of political gamesmanship, they are doing so brilliantly.

    Oh, sure, they've been cruel, at times astonishingly brutal, but when
the dust settles nobody will really remember how they won the fight, only
that they won -- big.

    Stockwell Day entered this campaign thinking he could change the rules

of the game with an agenda of respect. How nice. How incredibly naive.

    So, consider this campaign Day's undergraduate degree in the school of

political hard knocks.

    LESSON ONE: Nice guys finish last. Remember Robert Stanfield? Joe
Clark? The Grits made mincemeat of them by attacking their character and
creating the image of innocent, naive, bumbling fools. They looked weak
and indecisive. In Day they successfully created a different image -- that
of a dangerous religious zealot. In hard-knocks politics, the image is all
that matters, how they created it doesn't. Brian Mulroney was the
exception. He beat them at their own game. He never tried to play the nice
guy.

    LESSON TWO: Never under-estimate an adversary. Look at Chretien's
electoral record. He's been in politics for four decades. You think he
learned his survival tactics with the boy scouts? Day should have known
what was coming -- that they'd attack his religious beliefs, that they'd
pore through his voting record in the Alberta Legislature, that they'd
exploit any hint of unconventional thinking, that they'd find some kook on
the fringes of society who carried a CA membership card and use it to
smear all supporters as bigots and wing-nuts. Day should have been
prepared for all of this. Instead Day has spent the better part of this
campaign looking like Bambi trapped by the headlights of a transport
truck.

    LESSON THREE: Set the agenda, don't become it. No prime minister in
recent history has willingly called an election with such an unenviable
record to defend. So, where's the debate about reckless mismanagement of
the country's finances in the human resources department? Why isn't the
election framed by an unending assault on Chretien over his many gaffes?
Why are they focused instead on issues like Creationism and dinosaurs? The
Grits have successfully transformed this from an election about their
record to a national referendum about Day and his so-called hidden agenda.
Instead of attacking the Grits, Day must spend most of this fight reeling
from the punches and defending himself.

    LESSON FOUR: Don't appeal to voters' higher sensibilities. They're not

listening.

    LESSON FIVE: Elections are short, don't carry too much baggage. He
should have dropped the loopy stuff by disengaging himself from talk about
religious school funding or taxing Natives or referenda based on the whims
of a tiny minority of single-issue Canadians. Each new controversial
position simply gives more Canadians a reason to hop off the Alliance
bandwagon. Keep the promises simple and stick to them. Pledge to be a more
prudent and sensible manager of their taxes. That's what unites the
majority of Canadians.

    Little else does.