Leaders have taken turns with blunders

Three leading contenders have taken turns figuratively shooting themselves in the head during campaign of errors

So, as this dumbest Quebec campaign draws to a close, how will it be remembered?

Maybe for citizen Raymonde Chagnon’s reply, when the moderator of the first televised debate asked whether she had been “enlightened” by the leaders’ answers to her question. “Pas tellement,” she said — not really — speaking for discerning voters throughout the campaign.

Or the campaign story that went global: Liberal leader Philippe Couillard’s obtuse let-them-eat-pork advice for stretching a $75 weekly food budget.

“First you look at all the circulars … You shop only for what’s on sale, and there are always good sales on things … For example, a piece of pork. You cook it the first night as roast pork, then you make macaroni with pork, then you make shepherd’s pie with pork, then you make sandwiches for the kids.”

Fun fact: Couillard doesn’t just talk like a French aristocrat, he even has the full name of one. Philippe Couillard de l’Espinay is the 11th-generation descendant of the first colonist of New France given a title, by Louis XIV in 1654.

Or maybe the phrase that best summed up the campaign was “insurance brokers,” to which a UQAM political scientist, André Lamoureux, compared the uninspiring party leaders vying to outbid each other for votes.

Make that insurance brokers playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun, since the leading contenders spent the campaign performing what resembled a Three Stooges routine, taking turns figuratively shooting themselves in the head.

Not Manon Massé, however. For most of her FreeEverything-for-Everybody Tour, Quebec’s Oprah (“You get a billion dollars, and you get a billion dollars …”) wasn’t taken seriously enough for the media to have her play the hit quiz game Trivial Pursuit Campaign Gotcha Edition.

This left Québec solidaire the only party in control of its campaign. Its usually empty media bus was as good as no media bus at all, which was what Doug Ford had in this year’s Ontario election. Avoiding reporters’ questions apparently didn’t hurt Ford, since he won. Quebec parties may take note.

At this writing on Friday, it was not certain which exhausted male sexagenarian would be chosen the winner by the dwindling audience for this reality show.

In the first Quebec election in nearly 40 years that was not about independence

— or anything else, really — television viewership of the French-language debates declined by more than 20 per cent from the last election, four years ago. Another possible sign of apathy was low turnout for advance voting, notably in traditionally Liberal ridings.

The most likely outcome was used-candidate salesman Smiling Frank Legault at the head of a Coalition Avenir Québec minority government, with the Parti Québécois holding the balance of power. This could give Legault an excuse to drop his immigrant-expulsion proposal once it had served its cynical purpose in helping him get elected.

Couillard’s present majority government would be the first elected in Quebec since 1970 to be defeated after a single term.

Liberal leaders do not survive election losses, and the aloof Couillard has been a poor leader.

There is little love lost for him in a party that once valued loyalty above all else, but whose caucus now is said to be so treacherous that it leaks damaging information to its opponents.

The PQ didn’t wait for election night to show signs of mutiny against its leader. Even Jean-François Lisée’s running mate and political human shield, Véronique Hivon, took a safe distance from him.

The Great Strategist had turned out to be a great blunderer. And it wasn’t only in the late campaign, with Lisée’s suicidally obsessive, Captain Ahab-like attack on QS, in which he lost whatever slim chance he had in the election after first appearing to lose his mind.

By then, the PQ had already been mortally wounded by Lisée’s decisions first to eliminate the referendum as an election issue, which created an opening for the CAQ, and then to leave it open by ignoring the threat from that side.