Laughter has returned to the floor above Stephen Harper's office on Parliament Hill, where the Liberal leader is rewriting the party's winter playbook.
It's no longer that the Prime Minister's "time is up"� in a mad rush to force a snap election. Emerging from a hellish month were everything went wrong, Michael Ignatieff has changed his mind and plans to "let him stew"� until next spring to see if he can build on changing Liberal fortunes.
While an election delay only makes sense for a party sinking to deep lows in the polls, it's also true that a Conservative government basking in a polling bump just last week suddenly appears on the defensive.
That's why the most relieved face in Canadian politics today is the pink-tied leader who sat in his Centre Block office one floor above Mr. Harper's for a candid National Post interview, anxious to switch the channel after the weeks of public backlash and internal dissent stemming from his decision to oppose the government and try to force a vote.
Canadians, a seemingly re-energized Mr. Ignatieff predicts, will need a little more time "” but they'll learn to loath the Conservatives again. That's arguable given his party's fracturing in Quebec and faltering in Ontario, for which the leader admits he's not without blame. "I've still got a lot of work to do.... but I think that the Conservatives are now in the frying pan,"� Mr. Ignatieff insists.
"What we get for the $56-billion deficit will be the legacy question of Stephen Harper's administration."�"What Canadians feel they've got is a massive and grotesque Conservative re-election campaign and a lot of the pork is starting to stink, particularly coming from a government that promised accountability."�
He has cause for sudden optimism. His Liberal backroom is digging up enough dirt to sustain allegations of the stimulus package as partisan slush.
It's more than just that one oversized cheque bearing the Conservative party logo. Conservative MPs are now quietly questioning even the wisdom of their own signatures on the fake cheques.
Other indications are piling up that the use of deficit dollars for electioneering advancement has gone systemic.
Various newspaper investigations have waded through a government maze which confounds simple stimulus analysis to discover a Conservative riding bias in pocketing the handouts, which appear to validate Liberal research that is angrily disputed by government officials who insist it will all balance out in the end.
Reporters have also discovered that Mr. Harper's elaborate showcase event last spring to reveal some basic fiscal progress racked up a six-figure price tag when it could've and should've been staged in Ottawa for free.
Even the government's handling of the Afghanistan file is taking a hard hit which seems to mesh with the Liberal theme of this as a heavy-handed government fixated on snuffing out dissidents and unscripted distraction.
Former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier's autobiography, A Soldier First, was generally supportive of the Harper government, but he did unleash on the Prime Minister's Office for its control-freakish bid to gag and hide him from public view.
And there are the nagging optics of the government's refusal to co-operate with a Military Police Complaints Commission probe into Afghan detainees as it prevents a key diplomat from releasing his eye-witness reports to prisoner torture.
"If they'd let people talk freely, we'd be out the other side of this inquiry by now,"� says Mr. Ignatieff. "Instead we're in this lockdown, cover-up mode where the only thing they're trying to protect is their reputation, not the honour of the Canadian Forces."�
Add all this up and the recently besieged Michael Ignatieff has a pinch-me- I'm-dreaming attitude as he moves to counter those incessant Conservative "just visiting"� attack ads.
"How would you feel when you're watching the third or fourth inning of a ball game and every time there's a commercial break, you're on there? I'm not complaining because this is politics, but for heaven's sake there's no big mystery why my numbers are down. I've been beaten up for six months,"� he says.
So will Mr. Ignatieff lift his attack from the Commons floor to the airwaves, trading sucker punch for sucker punch on television? No way, he says.
"It's not about Michael Ignatieff. It's about this damn government,"� he says. "I don't want to attack his patriotism or his family or his loyalty to the country. What bothers people about the Conservatives is their 24-hour hyper-partisan politics of personal destruction and I'm not going to fall into that trap."�
Hmmm. So where do nice guys usually finish?
But aside from Mr. Ignatieff's good week, which could be a short-lived phenomenon, he still faces the dual challenges of selling a redefining image of himself and filling the policy void with an idea or two that voters can grasp.
He seems determined to campaign against Stephen Harper as a Machiavellian monster, whose heart only beats when he sees an opening for political gain. That would be a hard sell as a platform.
"Harper's a political animal in every sense of the word. It's all politics, all the time,"� Mr. Ignatieff says. "I'm not that kind of politician. It was easy for me to vote in the middle of a national crisis to support a budget I had difficulty with because I thought the bottom was falling out of this place. But eight months later you look at this and think, what the hell's happening? From zero deficit to $32-billion to $56-billion and all of it with a Conservative logo on it."�
That's a stretch, but after 40 minutes with Mr. Ignatieff, surrounded by suddenly upbeat staff, you get the sense that a leader given up for dead has at least checked out of palliative care.
Nobody will be talking about Prime Minister Ignatieff any time soon, but there's some mojo in a Liberal momentum that had been stopped all summer by his disappearing act and all fall by his strategic missteps.
It's been noted so often it's almost a bad cliche, but governments defeat themselves and the Official Opposition is just there to scoop up the inheritance.
If the Conservatives continue to act unapologetically as if they, to lift a Liberal line, reign over their own Cheque Republic, they'll buy themselves only trouble in the Commons and in the election to come.
National Postdmartin@nationalpost.com
Photo: Why is this man smiling? His opponents are screwing up, that's why. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)
... Again, Liberal lapdog Martin attempts to spin Ignatieff's ineffectiveness and inaction as indications of an underlying master strategist.
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