Paul Wells has a good column in the latest Maclean's on what it was like travelling with Harper and his entourage the first week of the campaign. He more or less confirms my 7/10 Ups and Downs rating, while highlighting some pretty poor mistakes. Among them:
In the bus to Halifax airport, the TV reporters learned that Harper had snuck off to give an interview to ATV without telling us. And that in the interview he had apologized for the comments he once made about a "culture of defeatism" in the Atlantic provinces. If you really want to make a bus full of reporters angry, tell them their news organizations are paying the Conservative Party of Canada $2,000 a day so they can cool their heels while the candidate sneaks off to give away news for free to someone else. Show us the tape, we told the Harper staff. Give us a transcript. They protested that they couldn't.
It was time for desperate measures. So I asked the Liberals. "Your assignment," I typed into my BlackBerry as we strolled onto the airport tarmac. "Get us a transcript of Harper's interview with ATV before the Harper campaign can." Twenty-three minutes later, as the Harper jet warmed up to fly to Toronto, my Berry buzzed. Two Liberals had sent transcripts of the Harper interview.
Oh boy. As I've said before, with the libera bias of the media in this country (and I do not count Wells in that group), if the Tories want to win, they can't just run a campaign as good as the Liberals, they need to be better. Not a good sign.
