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I’m not asking you to feel sorry for Notley because a male politician said something mean.

She requires an extreme amount of adult supervision

Notley can take care of herself. Indeed, her response to O’Leary’s toxic cocktail of loopiness was pitch-perfect.

“There’s a number of people in that particular race,” Notley told reporters Thursday, at an event to announce the twinning of the Fort Saskatchewan bridge. “Some of them are interested in generating attention through a whole series of fun, creative and somewhat wacky approaches to generating media attention.

“It’s not really my plan to participate in that,” she added, with a grin and an eye crinkle, declining to mention O’Leary, or his party, by name.

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One of Notley’s best tricks is her ability to transfigure the vitriol her political opponents sling at her, and emerge shining. She doesn’t do outrage. She doesn’t play the victim card. She simply has a gift for looking like the only adult in the room, and of making her critics look foolish in the process. The more they rant, the calmer and cooler and more in control she appears.

It’s certainly not a universal gift within her caucus. And maybe Notley can only get away with it because she can rely on the more pugnacious likes of Sarah Hoffman and Shannon Phillips to be the Semenkos to her Gretzky. Still, in the face of O’Leary’s bluster, Notley’s ironic response kept her well above the fray.

But whether you like or loathe Notley and her policies, O’Leary’s tactics should give Albertans pause.