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Watching Stephen Harper do his election striptease is not an edifying sight. We all know where this is going. So why does he have to be so coy? Please Just call the stupid thing and get it over with

The election next door is a battle of the titans. Ours is a battle of the midgets. Instead of a warrior and a charismatic transformer, we've got a mean-eyed guy with the charm of a ball-peen hammer, pitted against a man so clueless that half his own party hopes he'll lose. The best reason to vote for Guy No. 2 is that he's not Guy No. 1. And that's a powerful reason.

Once upon a time, I thought that Mr. Harper might actually be principled. Now I know he's just another panderer. His idea of an economic policy is to cut a point or two off the GST and deal out tax breaks to parents who buy hockey sticks. His idea of a justice policy is to get tough on crime, even though crime has gone way down. His idea of a science policy is to slap a ban on plastic baby bottles, because maybe it will help him get the Mom vote. His idea of a culture policy is to cancel grants to suspicious left-wing intellectuals and rock bands named Holy Fuck. So what if the Winnipeg Ballet gets screwed too? The more the culturati scream, the better. They were never going to vote for him anyway.

Mr. Harper claims an election is necessary because Parliament is at an impasse - even though he has managed to get everything he wanted passed. We thought we had a fixed election date. Now we know it's fixed by him, on whatever date he wants.

No wonder Stéphane Dion is having a hard time looking like a leader. Instead, he's looked more like my pussycat in approach-avoidance mode on a rainy day. The cat desperately wants to go outdoors and fight the other cat, but he also doesn't want to get soaked. Eventually you just want to kick the cat out the door and tell him to make the best of it.

"What is his agenda? Nobody has any idea of what is his agenda," fretted Mr. Dion the other day. I'm no mind reader, but let me guess. Mr. Harper's agenda is to hope Mr. Dion screws up his campaign up so badly that the Conservatives can actually eke out a majority. Such a result is not completely out of the question. To start with, I defy any Liberal candidate to plausibly explain "Green Shift" in 15 seconds or less. Mr. Dion seems well-meaning but impractical, like one of those cartoon characters with a propeller-beanie on his head. Maybe the propellers stand for wind turbines.

Meantime, Mr. Harper is getting more disagreeable by the day. I thought he might swing toward the middle of the road and court the mainstream. Instead, he's been flinging red meat to the base. Perhaps he's betting that his base will be far more motivated to get out and vote than Mr. Propeller-Head's base will be.

Even if a majority eludes him, Mr. Harper figures his best shot is now, while the economy isn't too bad and the Liberals are still broke. Afghanistan isn't going well, but luckily it's off the table. Everybody has agreed that Canada will stay the course until we cut and run, on a date that's fixed. So Mr. Dion can't get much mileage out of that. He did bring up the other A-word last week - abortion - but now that's off the table too. Oh well. Maybe Mr. Dion can persuade us that the Harper-Harris Tories are to blame for killing people's grandmothers with poisoned sandwich meat.

It's no wonder Canadians like minority governments so much. We are a prudent, sensible people. We look at our choices, and realize we're better off if none of them has too much power. And fortunately for us, this unpleasant business will be over soon. All we have to do is lie back, do our duty, and think of the Queen.