If there is a federal election this spring (and there may not be) it will not be over the contents of the government’s upcoming budget. It will be over Stephen Harper.

Harper cannot help but be the issue. He created the modern Conservative Party. He dominates his government in a way no other Canadian prime minister has ever been able to do.

Everything that emanates from Ottawa bears the imprint of Harper alone. His ministers, with one or two exceptions, are hapless. His senior civil servants lie low.

To say that he sets the tone of government is to engage in understatement. He sets tone, tempo and pace. He writes the libretto and composes the melody.

His supporters argue that the Prime Minister accurately reflects a widespread feeling among Canadians that traditional middle-of-the-road parties long ignored. And perhaps they are right.

There is an old-fashioned, bitter element to Harper’s brand of conservatism, as if its practitioners are working out long-standing grudges against enemies they’ve resented since high school — liberals, leftists, gun critics, Toronto people.

Yet in another sense his take-no-prisoners approach is very modern. Like a quick email sent in a moment of anger, it leaves no room for subtlety.

Things are either black or white. If you criticize his approach to Afghanistan, you support the Taliban. If you argue with his views on the Middle East, you are anti-Semitic. If you question his fascination with incarcerating more Canadians, you are soft on crime.

When his party engages in sharp practices — like the alleged election-expenses scam Crown prosecutors now accuse the Conservatives of undertaking — the response is defiant: Everyone else does this; why can’t we?

The fact that everyone else doesn’t break Canada’s election financing laws is ignored.

Indeed, the fact that Conservatives face charges at all only proves what Harperite Conservatives always knew: They are persecuted; the leftish elites have stacked the cards against them; they must strike back harder.

Technically, the government could be defeated by the combined opposition parties over its March 22 budget, forcing an election.

But the budget is a beard. Unless Finance Minister Jim Flaherty adds a last-minute poison pill, its contents promise to be — like most of Harper’s economic policy during this recession — fairly middle-of-the-road: a bit of this and a bow to that, all leavened by vague calls for fiscal restraint.

Even the controversial corporate tax cuts — cuts the Liberals now oppose — won’t be in this budget. They were passed (with Liberal support) in the fall of 2007.

So if the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Québécois do take down the government over this budget, they are not likely, in any ensuring election campaign, to spend much time on the document itself.

Presumably, they will talk about how much better their ideas are than those of the Conservatives. The New Democrats like pensions. The Liberals are pushing home care. But for most Canadians, the focus — again — promises to be Harper. Polls suggest voters, while not necessarily fond of him, think he’s adept at running the economy.

The Conservatives will play on this by presenting Harper as the Buckley’s cough syrup of politics — hard to swallow but good for you. The opposition parties will showcase a different view.

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Which leaves it to us. How much do we dislike him? How much do we mistrust him? Do we dislike and mistrust the other party leaders more?

Is he the strong Prime Minister required by perilous times? Or is he just nasty?

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday and Saturday.

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