“You know,” Stephen Harper once said, “the longer I’m prime minister . . . the longer I’m prime minister.”

Aside from giving his biographer Paul Wells a clever title for his 2013 bestseller, The Longer I’m Prime Minister, Harper’s stating of the obvious was a reminder that the Conservative leader has always been in it for the long haul.

Indeed, Harper is already the sixth longest-serving prime minister in Canada’s 148-year history.

If he wins a fourth term on Oct. 19, he will have won as many elections as Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Pierre Trudeau, trailing only William Lyon Mackenzie King and Sir John A. Macdonald, who each had six mandates.

While Harper may not have the soaring national and international ambitions for Canada that Macdonald, Laurier, Trudeau or Brian Mulroney had, he hopes and believes his mantra of smaller government and lower taxes will continue to resonate with voters.

Still, he is likely mindful that 13 of Canada’s 22 prime ministers have suffered defeat at the ballot box.

Harper toppled incumbent Paul Martin in 2006 and sitting prime ministers who lost their jobs on Election Day include Macdonald in 1873, King in 1930, Laurier in 1911 and Trudeau in 1979.

So incumbency is not without its perils in this country.

That is one reason the Conservative leader triggered an extended 11-week campaign — twice as long as the norm — and is criss-crossing Canada, reminding voters that he is an unflappable steady hand in troubled times.

“This election is about who has the proven experience to keep Canada safe and our economy strong,” Harper said in the nationally televised Aug. 6 Maclean’s candidates’ debate in Toronto.

“We know that, beyond our shores, the global economy remains in a state of turmoil and uncertainty. We have falling oil prices, we have market turmoil in China, we have yet another debt crisis in Europe,” he said darkly.

“But through it all — since the end of the global financial crisis — we have the best economic growth, the best job creation and the best growth in middle-class incomes among any of the advanced, developed nations.”

In contrast, warned Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau “want a different course.”

“They would replace our low-tax, balanced-budget plan. They want to spend tens of billions of dollars additional in permanent spending to be financed by high taxes, permanently higher taxes and permanent deficits,” he said, alerting Canadians that his rivals would scrap the Tories’ baby-bonus program and income-splitting and curb tax-free savings accounts while increasing Canada Pension Plan premiums.

Sounding the alarm about the risks of change is a tried-and-true political strategy that Harper himself had to counter in the 2004 and 2005-06 campaigns when he was battling Martin.

Professor Cristine de Clercy, co-director of the Leadership and Democracy Laboratory at Western University’s political science department, noted Canadians have a high comfort level with incumbents.

“Actually, our leaders stay in office for quite a long time so, if anything, in Canada incumbency seems to give them an advantage as compared to other jurisdictions,” de Clercy said in an interview.

“One of the interesting things about Canada is that we’re a very leader-centric polity as compared to many other countries. There’s good empirical evidence that many Canadian voters think about the leader when they cast their vote for the local candidate or the party,” she said, pointing out political scientists have charted this in Canada since the early 1900s.

Queen’s University Prof. Christo Aivalis emphasized “there is an incumbency advantage in Canadian politics.”

“You essentially get free advertising. When you release a policy as the government of Canada it’s still in a sense the policy of the party,” said Aivalis, pointing out the Conservative government’s “increased use of the colour blue” in supposedly non-partisan advertising.

University of Toronto political science Prof. Nelson Wiseman said one phenomenon unlikely to reprise itself is a defeated prime minister mounting a comeback.

While Macdonald, King, Trudeau and Arthur Meighen were able to return to power, if Harper loses on Oct. 19 it will be difficult for him to stay as Conservative leader even if he wanted to.

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“Times have changed. You’re not going to get a guy like Arthur Meighen coming back,” said Wiseman, referring to the Conservative prime minister in office for a year and a half in 1920 and 1921 and again for 88 days in 1926.

“What happens now is that the shelf life of leaders that are defeated is a lot shorter and the dynamics are different because once upon a time they just had to maintain or control the confidence of their caucus,” he said.

“But now you have this ostensibly more democratic system and ... if you lose an election it’s as if . . . you’re a failure and it’s time to go. You don’t get to bounce back.”

Which is something that is probably not lost on Harper as he vies to leapfrog Jean Chrétien as Canada’s fifth longest-serving prime minister.

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