Just look at Bill Morneau.

No, really — look at him. Inoffensively handsome, with a telegenic smile, he projects an aura of solemnity without the preening self-regard that continues to plague, say, a certain former leader of Tommy Douglas’s outfit across the aisle.

Now, consider Morneau’s pedigree. A blue-blooded financier born into wealth, Morneau did what old money is meant to do in this country: he had himself educated at elite universities — the London School of Economics among them — then went to work for the family business.

It took him 13 years to grow his father’s business, Morneau Shepell, from a boutique-sized pension outfit to a global concern. He volunteered. He sat on all the right boards. He married a McCain. And then, he gave up a life in high finance to correct the country’s books after 10 years of Conservative savagery.

Were you to create a perfect Liberal specimen in a Petri dish, Bill Morneau would emerge from the glutinous culture medium and earnestly promise to help usher you into the middle class.

Yet Morneau’s perfectly crafted Liberal persona falls to pieces nearly every time he opens his mouth these days — and it’s seriously starting to hurt not just Morneau’s prospects but the Liberal brand itself.

By my count, we are approaching week 15 of the Liberal government’s ‘tax fairness’ initiative, which ostensibly sought to trim certain loopholes used by the country’s wealthiest one per cent to avoid paying their fair share. It has since become akin to a slow motion car crash, though with less compelling visuals.

All of this — every last bit of it — is Bill Morneau’s fault. First, in its bid to bring a bit of mid-mandate torque to the news cycle, the Liberal government hustled its tax initiatives out the door without noticing how these laws ensnared not just wanton plutocrats but farmers, small business owners and other assorted members of valuable voting demographics.

The government jiggled the knobs by, among other things, promising to drop the small business tax rate. “We’ve listened,” said Justin Trudeau to his baffled cabinet and kvetching small business associations.

Morneau has had his fingers bent back so often in the last month that I’d be surprised if he can still hold a fork. Morneau has had his fingers bent back so often in the last month that I’d be surprised if he can still hold a fork.

Of course, this was well into October, when noted one-percenter Morneau was found to have been exploiting the exact same financial slights-of-hand he wanted to curtail with his new tax initiatives — particularly in regards to his villa in southern France. “Gumption” and “chutzpah” are great words.

It was also after Morneau said he wasn’t in conflict of interest through his ownership of Morneau Shepell stocks because, well, he didn’t own them. A company controlled by Bill Morneau owned them. So there.

The weeks since should have been humbling for our finance minister. Morneau announced the Morneau Shepell shares would be divested, sold off and otherwise removed from his holding company. He promised to donate the proceeds to charity.

He also promised umpteen times to consult with Parliament’s ethics commissioner. His demonstrable hypocrisy has made a virtual superstar out of Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre, which is a feat in itself. In short, Morneau has had his fingers bent back so often in the last month that I’d be surprised if he can still hold a fork.

Normally, people who have spent that much time in the woodshed walk back into the house with a sore rear end and newfound sense of contrition. But not our finance minister. Instead, he resumes the attack.

He called the attacks on his personal finances “distractions” and told a magnificently incredulous Vassy Kapelos of Global News that divesting those Morneau Shepell shares wasn’t an admission of anything other than a wish to make the problem to go away.

He also has repeatedly thrown ethics commissioner Mary Dawson under a bus, indirectly blaming her for having earned an estimated $143,000 in monthly dividends he’s received from those shares. (For those counting, that’s nearly $3.5 million since he became finance minister.)

All of this has hurt Brand Morneau, with the Liberal government suffering only collateral damage from what has wafted out of his mouth. That changed this week, when Morneau took it upon himself to attack members of the Conservative opposition for having numbered companies themselves — 21 Conservative members, to be exact. “I can do this bingo game too,” he snivelled during question period.

Consider the optics of this particular line of attack. Bill Morneau, multimillionaire, goes after 21 people who are decidedly not multimillionaires — a Goliath stomping on a bunch of Davids. Voters of any stripe are more likely to see themselves in someone like Poilievre, whose numbered company contains a rental property, than in Bill Morneau, whose numbered companies contain about $20 million in shares and the keys to a spectacular French villa, among other accoutrements.

During the 2015 election, every party in the country pledged allegiance to the ‘middle class’ — a beautifully elastic term that is the wellspring of so many votes. Bully for the Liberals for winning.

Yet Bill Morneau, prototypical Liberal in appearance and pedigree, has soured that pact by opening his mouth far too often. Perhaps someone on his side should ask him to close it.

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