Harper goes from shunning image politics to giving it a soft, fuzzy embrace

The prime minister has been trying to douse the notion that he's a prickly partisan who loves lunging for the jugular of prone political opponents.

An image makeover began with a volley of ads last week that has him waxing nostalgic about playing cards and music with his kids while clad in a Mister Rogers wool-knit sweater.

That makeover was abruptly interrupted after his campaign team unleashed a crude attack on Dion that might have reinforced the stereotype as a partisan brawler.

So it came to this:

The current prime minister of Canada invited the national media to breakfast Wednesday and talked about his tears.

To be fair, the description of how he choked up with emotion came amid a more substantive question-and-answer session about Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

But the decision to reveal his phone calls to dead soldiers' families and how he cried afterwards was all Harper's.

So was his choice of anecdote when asked why he entered politics. He managed to squeeze a reference to cute little schoolchildren into his response.

All this over a meal with Ottawa's parliamentary press corps - people whom he not so long ago had banished from the area near his parliamentary office.

He enforced the edict with the help of uniformed guards.

On Wednesday he was eating breakfast with them. Well, he never did actually take a bite.

Campaigning politicians, cameras, and food are a volatile concoction - as evidenced by a now legendary and embarrassing picture of the late Quebec premier Robert Bourassa scarfing down a hotdog.

So the prime ministerial fingers never clasped the plate weighed down with danishes and croissants.

The man who once sent his son off to school with a handshake during a photo op described his reluctant conversion to the Oprah Winfrey school of communications.

It was in response to a question whose essence was: How much do you hate doing this?

"My staff and advisers have been trying to get me to do for a long time is to, you know, quote, 'open up' - talk more about myself, what I think, what I feel, what makes me tick," he replied.

"I've always been somewhat uncomfortable with this.

"Because I am not in politics - and I think you all know - whatever faults I have, I'm not in politics because I love cameras and microphones.

"And I also am leery of politicians who seem to want to be celebrities and want to be part of the People magazine crowd.

"That's not why I'm in politics. That's not who I am. But I accept that when you lead the country, people want to know a little more about you."

That and the fact that if the Conservatives have an Achilles heel in this campaign, it's the impression - not always an unfair one - that the prime minister can be secretive, aloof, bullying, and sometimes downright nasty.

Not anymore. Or, at least, not for the next 34 days.

This is the man who once steadfastly refused to discuss his inner thought process in reaching a decision, let alone his emotions.

It's the same Stephen Harper who stripped away any sign of contrived emotion from speeches written for him.

He's the prime minister who instilled a pathological fear of indiscipline into his caucus.

So why did he enter politics, if not to wind up on the cover of People?

"Why am I in politics? . . . People always ask me - little kids especially will ask me a question. I go into classrooms once in a while. I always say, 'Anybody got a question?"' he said.

"A little kid will always put up his hand and say: What's the best thing about being prime minister?

"I always say, 'Running the government.' It's like Ray Charles (saying), 'What's the worst thing about being blind? You can't see.' You always forget the obvious."

Behind the breakfast table, the television cameras, and near the audio table, campaign aides laughed at the joke.

So did about a dozen of his notepad-toting breakfast mates.

He revealed a great deal during the 40-minute encounter.

Why his party can't crack Toronto?

"It's a chicken-and-egg problem," he said.

After years of losing, Conservatives have become a foreign species to Torontonians, he said. But he says an important victory or two would reverse that historic trend. Attracting immigrants - "turning small-conservatives into big-c Conservative voters" is key to that, he said.

The government can't guarantee your job, he said.

Despite the hard times in Ontario's manufacturing sector, he said, Canada has seen net job growth. What's important, he said, is setting the right conditions for the economy to grow and adapt to global change.

Would he send his children to Afghanistan?

"Not at age 9 and 12!" he cracked.

The vaunted Quebec machine that made Brian Mulroney prime minister?

Overrated.

Conservatives have had no presence there since the death of John A. Macdonald, he said. Mulroney's crushing majorities in the province were won with political machines borrowed from the Parti Quebecois and provincial Liberals.

He says he's trying to build a real, durable one.

Why Quebec sovereignty hasn't happened. Quebecers are proud of having helped to build Canada, he said.

"Quebecers do not hate Canada. It is a country admired around the world."

Will he offer any "big idea" in this campaign?

The only big idea of the campaign is the Liberals' carbon tax and - while a number of economists and environmentalists endorse the idea - Harper said, "it's a bad one."

He finally described why it is he likes running a government. He said he enjoyed making decisions, and had strong opinions about where the country needed to go.

"That's the essence of it for me. It's not the celebrity thing," he said.

"Which is the thing I will - when this is all over - I assure you I will not miss for one minute."