MONTREAL—Stephen Harper is a polarizing figure but his critics and his fans share one unshakable conviction and it is that the prime minister rules his government with an iron fist.

On that basis, most believe that in the matter of the Senate spending scandal, Harper is more puppet master than marionette.

But it is possible to argue the opposite — if only in the spirit of playing devil’s advocate.

There is no doubt that questions as to Mike Duffy’s expense claims got Harper’s attention early on. The former TV journalist was one of his high profile appointment and a top Conservative household name.

It also can’t have taken long for the prime minister to come to the conclusion that the safest way to extricate the government from a potentially dangerous mess quickly would have to involve Duffy reimbursing the money.

But the errant senator was one of the most popular members of the government caucus and, at first, many MPs wanted to believe he was the target of a bean-counting witch hunt.

To cut him loose at the first hint of controversy at a time when caucus management in general was becoming a major challenge for Harper would not have come across as a terribly attractive option for the PMO. By all indications he was cut some initial slack.

That being said, it is hard to imagine that Harper would ever have suggested that his chief of staff resolve the issue by digging in his own pocket. The notion that the prime minister approved the transaction — before or after the fact — is also debatable.

Some former chiefs of staff, notably Norman Spector and David McLaughlin, have said that in Wright’s position, they would have kept their boss in the loop.

Both worked for Brian Mulroney, a news junkie who would have been sorely tempted to take the lead on a file involving a friendly ex-journalist.

On the other hand, at least one senior member of Paul Martin’s government — speaking on background — is not convinced he would even have given the Liberal prime minister a heads-up that a story along the lines of the Wright-Duffy deal was about to break in the media.

If Wright seriously believed it was okay to make the Duffy problem go away by cutting him a personal cheque, the same reasoning could have led to the delusion that managing news of the transaction was just part of a typically hectic day at the PMO.

Harper may be a control freak but no prime minister is ubiquitous.

As part of ongoing research for a book on the 1995 referendum, I interviewed Daniel Johnson earlier this week. The man who led the No forces in Quebec could not remember having had many conversations with Jean Chrétien over the one-month campaign. The prime minister, he said, had a lot of other fish to fry.

Is it unreasonable to think that Harper who — like Chrétien — is constantly juggling pressing demands for his time would have assumed the Duffy issue was resolved in a straightforward manner and moved on?

Once the story broke, it was a few days before the prime minister accepted Wright’s resignation. Instead of showing him the door, he spoke up for him. The opposite would have been surprising.

In the past, Harper had ridden out other ethical storms over lesser members of his team. The initial instinct of any prime minister would be to try to avoid a loss of the magnitude of the sudden departure of a chief of staff.

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But if this episode is not rooted in malevolence on his or his staff’s part, why does Harper not just admit that he, too, is not impervious to human error rather than resort to serial character assassination to fend off opposition queries?

One explanation could be that if he has to choose, the prime minister would rather have voters think he is an evil genius than a fool.

The risk, of course, is that voters will conclude (a) that Harper is no genius and (b) that he is merely evil.

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