If popular budget measures could guarantee the re-election of a three-term government, Paul Martin would have won the 2006 election.

The 2005 Liberal budget — as rewritten under the guidance of the NDP — was chock full of social policy initiatives that, taken individually, enjoyed support well beyond the party’s base.

As a bonus to the Liberals, those measures went against the ideological grain of the then-Conservative opposition. If he became prime minister, Stephen Harper could not be expected to pursue them.

But by the time Canada went to the polls eight months after the spring budget there was little left of the electoral good will it could have inspired.

Its NDP co-authors even voted (along with the other parties) to bring down the Martin Liberals before their budget demands had been translated into policy.

For that Jack Layton’s party was rewarded — not punished — with 10 more seats. The Liberals, on the other hand, lost the election to the Conservatives.

Martin’s pleas to preserve the social gains that were part of the government’s last budget by sticking with the Liberals fell on deaf ears. His enviable fiscal record as finance minister — even when stacked against the non-existent one of an inexperienced opposition — failed to sway voters.

What stuck instead was the perception that the ruling Liberals had grown complacent; that they had lost their ethical compass; that Martin, despite his newness as prime minister, was too much of an insider not to be part of the problem; that it was — in short — time for change.

As the Harper government delivers its last budget before seeking a fourth mandate, it is facing many of the same challenges that Martin failed to overcome in the 2006 election . . . and then some.

That starts with fatigue with the prime minister.

On that score, Harper is in better shape then predecessors such as Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney at the same juncture. But should that really be a source of great comfort to the Conservatives?

For it could equally be argued that Martin at the time of his defeat was both a less polarizing figure and a more credible economic manager than the prime minister currently is . . . and he still lost.

Martin could never dispel the cloud that the sponsorship inquiry cast over his government. The scandal came to be seen as a token of a widespread ethical rot within Liberal ranks.

The fact that the then-prime minister was personally exonerated of blame or that he was repentant for the alleged sins of the previous government did not cut it with most voters.

Harper’s record is equally shadowed, in his case by the tribulations of some of his star Senate appointees.

The subtext of the ongoing Mike Duffy trial is that a prime minister initially elected to clean house was content to leave the Senate to its questionable ethical devices for almost a decade.

With every passing mandate it becomes harder for an outgoing government to convince voters that it is not running on empty.

Looking at Tuesday’s budget, voters will have to decide whether the quasi-reflexive delivery of tax cuts — always calculated for maximum electoral impact — is a sign that the government is still able to renew itself from within or the symptom of an aging one-trick pony.

It did not help Martin that, upon his arrival as leader, some of the stronger members of the Chrétien government — ministers such as John Manley and Allan Rock — left politics.

With the loss of finance minister Jim Flaherty and the untimely departure of foreign affairs minister John Baird, Harper’s lineup is also less solid than it was just one election ago.

The Conservative and Liberal roles are reversed in yet one final way.

Over the past few months, Justin Trudeau has taken a hit for keeping his economic blueprint under wraps.

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With the government’s cards on the table, the Liberals will soon have to start showing their own hand.

But in 2005, Harper similarly waited until the election was called to unveil his plans, starting with a GST cut that the Liberals would have more efficiently savaged from the purview of government than they ever could on the hustings.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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