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So what does Prime Minister Stephen Harper do now about a public inquiry into Brian Mulroney's dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber?

Not long ago, Mr. Mulroney loudly insisted he wanted one. Then last week, he insisted that, having testified before a parliamentary committee, no public inquiry was necessary.

The public seems to agree with this latest Mulroney demand. Yesterday, a Canadian Press Harris/Decima poll showed that 52 per cent of Canadians do not want a public inquiry, compared with 32 per cent who do. The same poll - and Harris/Decima is one of the very best pollsters in Canada - revealed that only 21 per cent believed Mr. Mulroney was telling the truth before the House ethics committee.

A loose interpretation of these snapshot findings might be: We don't think he was telling the truth, but there's nothing new in that, and we don't want to spend the time and money confirming what we already think or know.

Mr. Harper promised an inquiry right after Mr. Mulroney demanded one, and subsequently asked University of Waterloo president David Johnston to recommend the terms for the inquiry.

It seemed at the time like a defensible position. The Liberals were scavenging for something in the House and seized on the Mulroney affair to put the government on the defensive. The Mulroneyites in the Harper coalition seemed at peace with an inquiry, since their former boss had demanded one. Other Conservatives who held Mr. Mulroney in less esteem saw an inquiry as a way to distance their "new" party from the bad, old Progressive Conservative one.

Now, it would appear that neither Mr. Mulroney nor the public wants an inquiry that would certainly run for a long time and consume millions of public dollars. (What judge in his or her right mind, by the way, would wish to preside over such an inquiry?)

Why would Mr. Mulroney change his position so completely? It seemed at first as if he wanted an inquiry to clear his name once and for all, and to use it to expose what he considered the shoddy work and nasty intentions of those who had tormented him over the Airbus affair and his relations with Mr. Schreiber. He had nothing to hide and had done nothing wrong, in contrast to his tormentors, as an inquiry would reveal. By demanding an inquiry, he forced Mr. Harper's hand.

Now, Mr. Mulroney doesn't want an inquiry, despite the fact that his testimony last week left hanging many questions that a parliamentary committee will struggle to answer but that a public inquiry might.

Could it be - and this is mere speculation - that the rigour of preparing for last week's testimony made it obvious that a public inquiry could consume his life for the next two or three years? Or could it be that he came to understand better that, in the hands of an inquiry lawyer, some of the dark corners of this entire affair would see the light, or at least some light, and that what lies in those corners might not be advantageous to his cause?

Did he demand an inquiry in anger and haste? Did he figure one would never be called, so he could look good for having demanded one? Who knows?

Perhaps Mr. Johnston will give Mr. Harper a way to back off his promise to hold an inquiry. He could recommend appropriate terms of reference for an inquiry. Then he could add a kind of obiter dictum, saying that, having studied the files, he could foresee another way of proceeding by simply encouraging the police to investigate.

Anything less than an inquiry, of course, would cause the opposition parties to howl that the Conservatives were "covering up" for Mr. Mulroney. They would scream that Mr. Harper had changed his mind and was still doing Mr. Mulroney's bidding.

Those parties would also have to remember that the public doesn't want an inquiry. If one were created, the parliamentary committee's investigation would eventually peter out. That's what happened in the sponsorship affair when the Gomery inquiry supplanted a Commons committee.

Mr. Harper has to decide: Proceed or back down? There's no easy answer - which is the way things often are in politics.

jsimpson@globeandmail.com