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Three weeks into the campaign, the Conservatives have not yet released a platform. Do they need to release one soon? Could they go the entire campaign without doing so?

Scott Reid (former communications director for Paul Martin): There's no right or wrong way to play platform bingo. Some campaigns have succeeded with highly detailed documents released mid-campaign. Some have unveiled their blueprints a year in advance. Some have skated by with individual planks laid out over the course of the writ period.

Practically speaking, only two principles must be honoured when it comes to launching party programs: do no harm, and shore up strategic deficiencies where possible.

The first speaks for itself. Who knows what might have happened in the last Ontario election if John Tory hadn't chosen to die on the hill of religious schools funding.

The second is more subtle. In 1993, Jean Chretien skillfully blunted suggestions that his was a substance-free zone by presenting a professional and balanced program. It answered critics and sealed off a major potential vulnerability. With the Red Book, the Liberals gave themselves instant gravitas and forever changed the way campaigns treat their party platforms.

In this election, Stephen Harper hardly need worry that voters will suspect he lacks substance. Say what you will about Mr. Harper, he's never going to come across as a policy lightweight. That doesn't mean he can afford to be cavalier on the issue.

In the post Red Book-era parties must, at some point, present their program in whole with a financial reconciliation. Especially at a time of weakening economic performance, it would be flat-out reckless for Mr. Harper to simply say, "trust me."

For that reason, we will see a platform document sooner or later from the Conservatives. And it will be accompanied by some attempt to account for the costs of their promises.

The difficulty of achieving the latter may explain why it's set to come so late in the campaign. One thing's for sure: For a prime minister who urges voters to see him as the safe steward, he can't afford to get his numbers wrong. That would trespass against the first sin of platform launches.

Greg Lyle (former chief of staff for premiers Gary Filmon and Gordon Campbell) :There is absolutely no need to release a platform. When I starting campaigning in the 1980s, no one released platforms. Gary Doer won the election of 1999 with a five-item agenda. Mike Harris won re-election in 1999 on a job description, not his platform.

Although platforms aren't necessary, they can be useful. By taking a stand across a broad range of policy options, an opposition party can demonstrate it is ready to govern. That isn't a problem for the Harper Conservatives. But providing a platform also helps defend against charges of a hidden agenda. Right now, if the Tories had a platform book with a page on arts and culture, they would be better able to defend themselves against attacks. Platforms also provide a hymnbook from which all the party's candidates can sing.

On the other hand, platforms offer targets to your opponents. They check to see if the numbers add up. If you missed a key priority of an important stakeholder group, you run the risk of alienating them. Not every policy is necessarily perfectly thought through and some backfire. So platforms should not be an automatic choice for a campaign. They need to weigh the pros and cons.

Platforms are just a means to an end. For campaigns, the end is winning. Running an incumbent government with a wide array of policies in place, Stephen Harper does not need a platform to win.

Gerald Caplan (former NDP campaign manager): About three years ago, author Ron Susskind revealed in The New York Times Magazine an entire new dimension of political life in the United States. After interviewing many of those who worked for or near George W. Bush's White House, he realized that there were now two realities that characterized Mr. Bush's America.

One was what was. The other was whatever the Bush neo-cons wanted it to be. Reality, as one informant explicitly said, is what we say it is.

Thus ended nearly 400 years of the battle to elevate reason and evidence as the main instruments of democratic and humane governance.

The Bushies who run the John McCain campaign - Steve Schmidt et al - have had no trouble bringing him over to the dark side. When shown how their propaganda incessantly repeats statements that are known by all to be lies---Sarah Palin opposed the Alaska road to nowhere, Barack Obama favors sex education for small children - they laugh like hell. Truth is irrelevant, they acknowledge, and they intend to say anything they think might work, and what are you going to do about it?

Do you see where I'm going with this apparent digression? Do you think Stephen Harper and some of his more reprehensible henchmen aren't fully aware of what their soul-brothers down south have added to the dignity of the democratic process?

Mr. Harper knows when a wedge hurts the fabric of Canadian life. He knows what's real reality and what's his invented reality and actually says so. He admits he doesn't care what academics say about anything that gets in the way of his latest campaign tactic. War and peace, national unity, the entire economy, child porn - all are grist for his political wiles.

So to the question of the hour: It is more than conceivable that Harper can go the entire campaign without releasing a platform. He can do so without batting an eye or making an excuse. He can show how it's the most responsible and ethical thing to do. He can become passionate - well, barely awake, but still - in attacking everyone else for both having platforms at all and for the way they'll screw Canadians.

But there's one small catch here. When Mr. Susskind did his research, the Bushies were still feeling the glow of their 2004 re-election. After all, their own reality had triumphantly persuaded millions of Americans that a true war hero was a liar and coward and that a man who slimed his way out of combat and lied about it evermore deserved to be re-elected. Soon after, though, the Bush bubble burst, and Mr. Bush retires as the most unpopular president in memory.

Whether Mr. McCain can get away with his own reality in November is very much in question. Mr. Harper should beware: Sometimes real reality actually wins out.