The Conservatives built their recent re-election campaign around leadership. They put Stephen Harper front and centre in their effort to persuade Canadians that only he could lead them through the coming economic storm.

The problem for Harper was the popular distrust that has followed him around like a cranky footnote. While few doubted Harper’s intelligence and discipline, they never found him very likeable.

It was famously said that Franklin D. Roosevelt had a second-class intellect and a first-class temperament. It wasn’t really true — FDR was also bright — but the reverse can surely be said of Stephen Harper. He has a first-class intellect and a second-class temperament.

Politics is all about marketing, and the selling of Stephen Harper has always been hard.

That he is cold and distant, that he is humourless and wooden, we knew. But politicians of that ilk, such as Richard Nixon, can get elected if they can persuade us of their competence.

This Harper had done in two and a half years in office. But to win a majority, to close the deal with Canadians, he had to make them more comfortable with him — to like him.

And so the smart Tory strategists dressed him in sweaters.

They had him play the piano and play with children — all to make this wallflower look fragrant.

It failed. Canadians denied Harper his majority, again. In Quebec, where he had hoped to find extra seats, all it took was a disparaging comment about culture and artists that was so silly he refused to repeat it in French.

The mask fell. Suddenly, there he was, his contempt laid bare.

It reinforced a sense of meanness, and it cost him.

When Parliament reconvened, he talked conciliation. Facing another minority, he seemed to want to make the institution work.

So what did he do?

He cancelled public financing of political parties, bankrupting his opponents.

And he suspended the right to strike of public servants.

He thought he could get away with both while the Liberals were leaderless.

He is an unreconstructed bully, and presented with a chance to land a blow upon a bruise, he can’t resist.

We have never had a prime minister in memory quite like him. John Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien could brawl but had charm. Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson and Joe Clark were gentle souls.

Stephen Harper is something else. And that’s why he and his government are in trouble today.