OTTAWA–There is a curious twist in the history of some long-serving Canadian prime ministers and their reputations.

They come to office with one reputation and – fairly or unfairly – gain the opposite one.

Pierre Trudeau was all about ideas and not concerned about being liked; he is most remembered for his charisma. Brian Mulroney wanted to be liked, but his policies such as free trade and the GST is what endured. Jean Chrétien was the little guy from Shawinigan who came to be viewed as a dictator; Paul Martin was the supremely competent finance minister who was castigated in power as indecisive and a ditherer.

And now, we have Stephen Harper, who marked two years this week since being sworn into office. That's long enough to see whether the twist applies to him, too, despite his best efforts to remain scripted, aloof – and unknowable.

It's hard to imagine now, but Harper actually used to speak quite often to reporters, casually and off the record. As a young Reform MP on Parliament Hill in the early to mid-1990s, he was known as one of the most media-friendly members of the caucus – a regular on political panels and a reliable sounding board for off-the-record insights about the state of his party and politics in general. He did not like political-image affectation. It was Harper who blew the whistle on his boss, then Reform leader Preston Manning, for the party-financed wardrobe allowance.

Contrast this to the Harper, as boss, who now has a makeup artist on retainer, a hostile stance to the media, and whose attention to shallow political optics is so acute that he rarely appears in public without backdrops and props.

Most incredulous, for those who knew the more low-key, rather humble Harper, there's the bizarre photo gallery that has recently come to grace the government lobby in the Commons – pictures of the Prime Minister in various action poses, replacing all the old photos of former prime ministers.

"Now that surprises me," says Deborah Grey, the woman who was the first Reform MP in the House of Commons, who hired Harper as her aide in 1989.

Grey, like most of Harper's cabinet, cannot claim she is particularly close to him these days. Harper keeps a tight leash on his cabinet and discourages participation in much of the socialization that is part of Ottawa life.

For the most part, Grey finds Harper is the kind of prime minister she thought he would be. As her right-hand man, he was smart, cerebral, strategic; the qualities Grey believes he's parlayed into his current position as Canada's longest-serving Conservative prime minister in a minority government.

Sometimes, when Grey is watching the news, she sees vivid reminders of the Harper she's always known.

"It's just the look in his eye that he's going to do it. He has his face set – focused, intent," she says.

In her travels in her post-political life, Grey says she's often asked what Harper really is like. She says she tells folks that he's not as hard and distant as his public persona, that you have to see him with his wife, Laureen, and two children to take the real measure of the man.

But the most vivid picture the public's seen on that score was the now famous one, shortly after his election win, when Harper shook the hands of his children to send them off to school.

When Harper left elected politics in 1997, disenchanted with the whole Ottawa scene, he went to work at the National Citizens' Coalition, an unapologetically right-wing advocacy group known for its crusades against political excess, especially MPs' pensions and rampant government spending.

Gerry Nicholls worked there then, and assumed the leadership of the NCC when Harper went into politics. But Nicholls was fired from the NCC in the wake of some vocal criticism of Harper's government – criticism he continues today, revolving around how Harper has turned his back on the principles he voiced when he was head of the NCC.

Some things about Harper's image in office haven't surprised Nicholls. Was he a tough, take-no-prisoners kind of boss? Most certainly, though Nicholls says Harper didn't yet have the habit of kicking furniture, swearing and throwing tantrums with staff, as several reporters and authors have documented.

"He was tough to work for," Nicholls said. "It was not a pleasant thing, being raked over the coals by Stephen ... I think you could say that intimidation was part of his management style."

What has stunned Nicholls, however, is Harper's reluctance to use his prime-ministerial post to advance conservative values and principles.

Nicholls has publicly debated Tom Flanagan, Harper's old mentor and confidant, about what seems to be the Harper government's preferred route of turning Canada conservative through incrementalism.

Flanagan laid it all out in Harper's Team, the book he released last fall, which advises Conservatives to borrow from Liberal methods to gradually paint the country Tory blue.

Nicholls is alarmed by the increase in government spending under Harper and his other more Liberal-like policies – on Quebec accommodation or the environment, for instance. But over and above that, Nicholls sees Harper's time in office so far as a squandered opportunity.

"What gets me is that he's not even talking like a conservative. The great Conservative leaders, people like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, used their position to inspire conservatives around the world ... Stephen Harper doesn't do that," Nicholls says.

Some people saw Harper more as a libertarian than a hard-line conservative in his life before becoming prime minister. He's remained true to that libertarian streak, by and large, with his refusal to get his government drawn into social-conservative policies such as abortion or capital punishment.

But the way Harper runs his government, with all its Big Brother, grudge-match discipline and expansive, central control, doesn't exactly fit with the libertarian philosophy of "maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state."

New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton has worked with Harper in opposition, in concert against the Martin Liberals, and now in the occasional negotiation with the Prime Minister in yet another minority Parliament. He can't say they have much of a relationship. Now, as then, their talks are all business, cut and dried. "Things were more fluid with Martin," Layton observes.

What's surprised Layton most, however, is the way in which Harper seems to have turned his back on the respect for Parliament he espoused when in opposition.

Remember all those demands Harper made of Martin to defer to the will of the majority in the Commons? Now, as Prime Minister, Harper is more likely to give Parliament the back of his hand and regard it as an obstacle to be overcome.

"I thought he meant it, I'll be honest," Layton says. "Well, I now realize he can't be trusted. Not that I was particularly trusting of him. But it was a surprise to me."





SEVERAL YEARS ago, when Harper was in opposition and still having those casual conversations with reporters, he got drawn into a discussion about the upside-down rule of prime ministers and their reputations.

He said it had already happened to him – everyone thought he was a rigid ideologue who couldn't unite conservatives and he'd already defied those predictions.

But that was a caricature, much like the various, scripted appearances that seem to preoccupy Harper and his team in power.

These days, Harper would prefer to be judged by his portraits than his personality.