Rather than just some bizarre aberration, Monday’s profane outburst by a Conservative partisan against a reporter questioning his leader Stephen Harper is actually the logical end point of the evolution of political campaigning in Canada.

Over the past 30 years, events organized for party leaders during a campaign have changed dramatically as have encounters between the media and leaders.

Not that long ago, leaders actually spoke at advertised events that invited the public to attend. There was always the risk of hecklers and demonstrations but good politicians took that in stride and frequently turned it to their advantage.

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Following the events, reporters would get a chance to question the leader, usually in fairly disorganized scrums after the crowd had left. Those exchanges often went on longer than the leader or his or her entourage wanted.

Then political handlers decided both types of events exposed their leaders to too much risk of spontaneous episodes or unwanted questions. Their answer was to make things more structured.

Public events morphed into events organized for party members and supporters, rarely advertised beyond those in the know, not open to the public and now by invitation only. That eliminated the risk of hecklers that could disrupt proceedings.

The focus became generating positive television images and here the gold standard quickly became selecting a small room and putting too many people in it. Over time that image expanded to include the now ubiquitous miscellaneous group of non-entities crowded behind the leader. Their primary role is to create a visual image of diversity or reinforcing the message of the day. Sometimes they also perform as bobbleheads nodding in sync at the leader’s comments.

Next was the decision to integrate the scrums that used to take place after political events into the events themselves. That turned the questioning of the leader by the media into a partisan political event, subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) trying to intimidate reporters. It also offered party operatives the chance to control the number of questions and even who was posing the questions as it was now a structured event.

Not surprisingly in an audience of partisans, the heckling was now directed at the media not the politicians. The audience would be encouraged to applaud the leader’s answers as that also looks good on television. If the applause quickly follow the end of the leader’s comments, the apparent public enthusiasm could not be edited out of any video clip.

The Conservatives, as in much of what they have done in government and do in campaigning, went a step or two further.

The party’s fundraising success has been largely based on telling stories to its supporters. One of its most enduring (and successful) myths is that everyone is out to get them and only through financial support can the Conservative party fight the good fight against the omnipresent forces of evil. A key enemy, regularly highlighted in fundraising letters over the years, is the media. Sometimes it is just the CBC. Other times it has been the parliamentary press gallery or the media in general. They tell lies, make things up and deliberately slant their stories with a bias against the Conservatives and their leader.

Stack the room with partisans, turn reporters questioning the leader into a partisan event, demonize the questioners as enemies of the party and the result is the hatred produced by Mr. Lying Piece of Shit.

It’s the predictable outcome of the devolution of election campaigning, stage-managed by political operatives but it’s not the video impression amplified by social media that all the clever scheming worked so hard to create.

Christopher Waddell is an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication and a former parliamentary bureau chief for CBC News.