Sometimes — not often — when a politician decides to resign, the parliamentary press gallery recognizes the exit as a loss to the political-journalism business.

It isn’t every MP who can speak into a microphone or stand in the Commons and regularly say smart, insightful and quotable things.

If journalists have a bias, it’s usually this: we are drawn to what’s interesting and unpredictable. We’re left cold by the opposite.

You’re probably thinking that this column is going to be all about Bob Rae, the former Ontario premier and former interim leader of the Liberals, who stepped down this week as the MP for Toronto Centre.

That’s only half correct.

About 16 years ago, the media reaction was similar when a fellow named Stephen Harper, a bright young backbencher for the old Reform Party, packed it in and decided he could make a difference outside the House of Commons, too.

“It would seem to me that I’ll have a lot more time to focus on thinking through issues,” Harper told me in a 1997 interview, when he was revealing his intentions to quit politics and take up a job as president of the National Citizens’ Coalition.

He’s now prime minister, but the earlier version of Stephen Harper was once as sought-after for intelligent, media comment as Rae has been the past few years. Many of us spoke to him regularly, on and off the record, throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Harper and Rae may be entirely different people, ideologically, but they share some traits that made them exceedingly interesting to those of us who have spent a while (OK, a lifetime) covering federal politics. Neither of them were talking-point kind of politicians; you came away smarter for talking to them.

Both men came to federal Parliament when they were young — Rae was just 30 when he was first elected as a New Democrat MP in 1978; Harper was 34 when he came to Parliament as a Reform MP in 1993.

Both men walked away after their first stint in the House of Commons, despite their early success there. Rae decided to pursue provincial politics in Ontario, where he ended up as premier in 1990. Harper lasted about three years as a Reform MP before he took the job with the NCC and, hard as it may be to believe, also became a TV pundit — a regular on Don Newman’s old Politics broadcast on CBC.

Both men, however, found their way back to the Commons — both through somewhat audacious decisions to abandon private lives and seek the leadership of parties in which they weren’t long-time members.

Rae, after a career as a New Democrat, decided in 2006 to become a Liberal and seek the top job in that party.

Harper helped found Reform, but by 2002 his old party had become the Canadian Alliance — all without his involvement — and when it went looking for a new leader, Harper came out of exile and ran for the job.

Rae lost; Harper won. This may explain why only one of these politicians remained an asset for quote-seeking journalists — and why another one became less so.

But let’s stick with the similarities for now.

As engaging or as intelligent as Harper and Rae have been before the cameras, they are both known behind the scenes as introverted, even socially awkward.

They aren’t the kind of politicians who plunge into a crowd with glee or enthusiasm. They are both polite, but reserved and very private. They are both married to women who are far better at working a room than they are. Laureen Harper and Arlene Perly Rae are, respectively, the social forces behind the current prime minister and the past Ontario premier. It’s far easier to talk to them than it is to their spouses.

The main strength of Rae and Harper (or at least the old version of Harper) was their attempt to see the political world through the eyes of their opponents and the people who supported them. They were curious about this, and talked to us about what they were thinking.

For all their similarities, though, their fates diverged. Rae won early in his career, Harper won late.

Rae became more interesting, more reflective, through his defeats. Harper became less interesting, less reflective — publicly, at least — with his victories.

Rae’s final interviews this week, especially his insights into what is wrong with modern politics, are fodder for a whole new set of graduate political-science and journalism theses.

Harper’s public comments these days don’t tell us much at all.

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“We will miss you,” Don Martin, of CTV’s Power Play, said to Rae after a particularly thoughtful interview on Wednesday night.

We miss the old Stephen Harper, too, by the way.

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