When political leaders start to lose power, it’s often because voters have come to believe they have grown too arrogant, too uncaring and too obsessed with their own image.

It’s what happened to Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien, all of whom left office when their support was near all-time lows and their reputations were tarnished.

It’s now happening to Stephen Harper.

The catalyst for this is the G20 summit June 26-27 in Toronto, which has become a political nightmare for Harper and his Tory party.

Indeed, the G20 summit and the accompanying G8 summit a day earlier in Huntsville, which Harper had once hoped would be so successful that he could tout them during his campaign for re-election, may well signal the beginning of the end of Harper’s reign.

The reasons are obvious.

First, the costs of the two summits will top $1.1 billion, a ridiculous sum for which Harper is unapologetic. He’s even defending a $57,000 “fake lake” to be built at the press centre in Toronto to give foreign journalists a Muskoka-like experience.

Second, Harper’s proposal to fund maternal health programs in poor countries, which was to be his G8 legacy piece, is exploding in his face due to his refusal to allow Canadian funds to be used to provide abortions for women.

For days, Harper has been insisting the $1.1 billion price tag for the summits, including $930 million for security, is justified.

It’s a hard sell, though, given that security cost only $18 million at the G20 summit last September in Pittsburgh and $30 million at the G20 meeting last April in London.

Canadians simply aren’t buying Harper’s argument. More than two-thirds of those polled say that playing host to world leaders is a waste of money, according to a new Ipsos Reid online poll.

True, much of the security costs are legitimate.

But it’s the “fake lake” that’s the tipping point for Harper.

Even western newspapers that historically have been cheerleaders for Harper are angry.

Ottawa “should gaze into its fake lake and do some reflecting,” the Calgary Herald said Wednesday in an editorial. “It’s the loopy lake project that will leave the lasting impression of waste.”

The public is right to be furious — and disillusioned — with Harper.

Throughout his career, Harper has preached restraint, advocating spending cuts, lower taxes and more accountability to taxpayers.

And yet on this key issue Harper believes he is under no obligation to explain why a phony lake was approved or why overall costs for the three days of meetings are so high.

No heads will roll.

No full investigation will be conducted into the soaring costs of the summits, where world leaders will actually meet for barely 10 hours.

In effect, he is thumbing his nose at voters, and they know it.

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For them, he is talking out of both sides of his mouth — urging summit leaders to focus on the global economic crisis while lavishing them and their entourages with the most expensive summit of all time.

At the same time, the abortion funding issue has become a major political disaster for Harper.

He announced in April that his government would not allow Canada’s contribution to a special G8 fund to pay for abortions in poor countries. It’s a policy that copied one championed by former U.S. president George Bush.

The Obama administration ripped up the old policy as soon as it took office. “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health and reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently.

Harper now finds himself out of step with all other G8 countries on this approach, including the U.S. and Britain.

He also finds himself increasingly out of touch with Canadians on it.

A new Canadian Press-Harris Decima poll conducted in early May and released this week found 58 per cent of those polled opposed his decision on abortion funding to developing countries.

That’s up significantly from 46 per cent in March.

So strong is the opposition to the Prime Minister on this issue that one of the more popular T-shirts for women in Toronto these days carries the words: “Abort Harper.”

Arrogant, uncaring, out of touch on key issues, obsessed with image.

It’s a recipe for failure for Harper.

Just as it was for Trudeau, Mulroney and Chrétien.

Bob Hepburn's column appears Thursday. bhepburn@thestar.ca

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