Stephen Harper's summer ... so far

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With summer about half over, it's worth taking stock of the kind of season its been for the Prime Minister and the Conservative government. My take is this.

The G8-20 meetings in Toronto went well on the whole for the Prime Minister, although the debate about cost and security ended up limiting what otherwise might have turned into a pretty solid upside for Mr. Harper. Over the past few years, Mr. Harper has built a reputation for solid statecraft, with flashes of exceptional success. If some observers thought Mr. Ignatieff would have a public-opinion edge over the Prime Minister in world affairs, there is no evidence that this has panned out; if anything, the opposite seems more apparent.

Another positive for the Conservatives is that the fiscal situation continues to improve, as the economy recovers and revenues perk up. While this reduction in red ink doesn't mean dividends that are obvious in weekly horse-race polling , they afford the PM latitude to at least ponder an election this fall, instead of needing more time to repair the balance sheet. And that's before he considers the fact that his party continues to amass a huge financial advantage over competitors.

However, a summer that could have provided more political warmth for the Conservatives is failing to do so, on the whole.

As some polling shows, while a majority (albeit bare) tend to think "the country" is going in the right direction, the plurality say "the government" is not. Horse-race polls show little that is encouraging for the Conservatives, save the fact that there is still no clear evidence, not even reliable "green shoots" that Mr. Ignatieff is making up ground.

If the Conservatives are sputtering, they had probably best look within for the reasons why.

It's easy to come away with three impressions:

1. Some of their recent policy choices carried more risk than they may have anticipated.

2. Their effort to talk up the need for and the virtues of their policy agenda has fallen short of their past standards.

3. Their talents at talking their way out of harm's way have also been uncharacteristically hit and miss.

Pushing more law and order is normally not very controversial, but they seem to be stumbling to debate the $9-billion price tag attached to their latest reforms . Their defence, and they are surely on the defensive on this issue, seems meandering and a quarter-hearted most days. At this point, one has to doubt whether even the law-and-order base likes the idea of coughing up billions more, especially when some data show crime rates have been falling.

Buying $9-billion to $16-billion worth of fighter jets hasn't really become a public controversy yet, but this initiative is becoming a challenge that may grow over time. The traditional communications groundwork of establishing the need for the purchase and playing up any domestic economic upsides has been absent. And there has been and inconsistent and a lacklustre response to questions about this large a contract being sole-sourced. The opposition Liberals have started to sharpen their attacks, and seem to have solid material to work with. Lots of voters might today side with Mr. Ignatieff's preference for deferring this purchase to a later date, and would undoubtedly agree with the Liberal position that tendering makes more sense.

Finally, the long-form-census debate is almost case-study worthy, as communications goes. Before the announcement, there was no effort to rally interest in the problem that the government felt needed to be addressed. The blow-back was predictable, but from the get go, it seemed that the government kept bringing rhetorical pen-knives to a gun fight.

After the blow-back became a source of political anxiety for the Conservatives, two or three different lines of argument were inflated and trial ballooned, none of which have soared. Net-net, the Harper Conservatives added a public-opinion risk with no reward anywhere in sight. If they wanted a debate about which party best respects your privacy, there is little evidence or prospect of this happening now. The more likely question vexing centrist voters is whether the Harper government prefers ideology over information as a way to make decisions with their money and about their services.

All in all, despite the great weather Ottawa is enjoying this summer, a fairly brutish first half from the standpoint of the Conservatives.