The great comedian Milton Berle had a powerful put-down for the many acts that auditioned for his show but failed to make the grade. “High school,” he’d call them. And I can’t think of a better term to describe the Conservative campaign brain trust at the midpoint of this long election season.

Just lately, for example, the campaign seems to be having a tiny problem with geography. Last Friday, a Harper tweet provided a lovely snapshot of Little Crater Lake in the state of Oregon to illustrate its commitment to the Canadian great outdoors. Earlier in the week, a campaign spot talked about shipbuilding in Halifax, N.S. … against a backdrop of Johnstown, Ont. A group of Colombian miners sat in for a party ad promoting a mineral exploration tax credit. And then there was the Tory ad which misidentified a B.C. salmon as its Atlantic cousin — the online trolls are still chuckling over that one.

Well, these things happen. So do things like a sudden drop in the polls to third place. If that’s not a wakeup call, I don’t know what qualifies.

It all made me think of an incident in the 2000 campaign, when Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day lamented that Canadian talent and brains were heading south to the U.S., “just like the Niagara River.” The message was sound, the words were not; the Niagara actually flows northward.

Day took a lot of ungentle ribbing for that error — but his mistakes fade in comparison to the fiasco in the Big Blue Bus these days. There’s one common thread that links Day’s experience in 2000 to what Harper is going through right now: a profound sense of confusion on the ground. But that’s where the similarities end.

I worked on the Day campaign as legislative assistant to a front-bench MP. For the Alliance, the 2000 election was an unwelcome surprise from PM Jean Chretien, who always knew how to catch his opponents off guard. The CA had just been through a highly divisive leadership campaign and the party was low on funds. There was little corporate support for the party and many influential backers were waiting to see whether the Alliance could really replace the Progressive Conservatives as a centre-right alternative to the Liberals. Day fought that campaign on a shoestring, with family members playing key roles in the process.

The Conservative party is having more and more difficulty recruiting volunteers at the riding level. Even campaign stalwarts who show up for every election are finding reasons to stay home this time. Who’s surprised? The Conservative party is having more and more difficulty recruiting volunteers at the riding level. Even campaign stalwarts who show up for every election are finding reasons to stay home this time. Who’s surprised?

Contrast that situation with that of the Conservative Party in the late summer of 2015. They have been in government for almost a decade, with all the electoral advantages that power brings — including the ability to self-promote in publicly-funded PR campaigns, and to set the actual election date. The Conservatives established the current political contributions policy that has moved away parties away from corporate and union donations towards the small individual donors that Conservatives excel at reaching.

They have money in the bank and, by now, they should have the slickest, most professional, most nimble campaign team anywhere. And still the campaign stumbles from error to error, week to week.

To say the fact-checking in Conservative election ads has been less than careful is like saying Hillary Clinton has been less than transparent about her old e-mails. A party with a huge war chest and a winning record shouldn’t be coming off as a fringe party. But that’s what is happening.

Why? There are several reasons. The people who spent their time in the PMO terrorizing MPs and reassuring Harper about his job performance are running the show now; the grown-ups have left the room. Sycophancy might be an excellent way to bootstrap yourself into a career in government, but it’s a terrible way to run an election campaign.

The Conservative party is having more and more difficulty recruiting volunteers at the riding level. Even campaign stalwarts who show up for every election are finding reasons to stay home this time. Who’s surprised? Make the campaign about the leader and nothing else — not the local candidates, not what the party is supposed to represent — and you can expect to see enthusiasm at the grassroots start to wane.

This is still a close campaign and it’s anybody’s to win. But if the Conservative campaign continues to be tripped up by these amateur-hour antics, it might as well close up shop now. It’s time for an agonizing reappraisal of how this campaign is being run. It’s time to bring some maturity, experience and expertise to the effort.

Most of all, it’s time for the Conservative party to remind its erstwhile supporters of why it exists — to be something other than a weak facsimile of, or slightly better alternative to, the other parties. Give the faithful something to fight for. Telling them that “Stephen Harper isn’t perfect” simply isn’t good enough.

Back in 2000, I remember asking a journalist friend of mine who was covering the campaign whether he knew that the Niagara river flowed north, and why Day should be pilloried for making the mistake. “No, I didn’t know,” he said. “But I would expect a guy who wants to be prime minister to make sure he knows before he opens his mouth.”

Good point. I’d only add this: a guy who wants to be re-elected as prime minister shouldn’t be letting his campaign staffers open their mouths every week when they can’t get it right.

David Krayden was raised on Vancouver Island and has written extensively on Western political issues over the years. He was a columnist for the Calgary Herald and host of Calgary’s Liberty Today radio program; more recently he worked as an editor for Sun News. Krayden was a public affairs officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force and spent almost a decade on Parliament Hill as a communications staffer.

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