Candidates, campaign managers, backroom workers and those of the chattering and political classes in this country are braced for the big announcement. It now seems inevitable that the emergent life of springtime will be liberally (or conservatively) showered with verbal fertilizer, as we conduct the (mostly) democratic process of electing a new lot of those who would govern us.

We will probably do that Monday, June 28.

One can deduce from this that the current and unelected Prime Minister, Paul Martin, has decided that as bad as the portents for his Liberals may be, they ain’t going to get materially better by waiting. Which may make you wonder what else may be hiding under the blankets, what with the current spate of scandale impregnating the national agenda.

The most recent national pulse-taking by way of a poll puts the natural governing party at 40 per cent, just nicely edging into majority government territory.

The Conservatives drop five points to 23 per cent, and Jack Layton’s New Democrats come in at 18 per cent. But in the peculiar political landscape that now exists in this country, national figures are skewed all over the place by the regional vote.

As a for-instance: in Quebec the Conservatives barely peek over the horizon at just eight per cent of the vote, swamped by le Bloc Quebecois at 46 per cent. The Liberals rate a few seats (traditionally those in and on and around the island of Montreal) at 33 per cent of the vote, while the NDP matches the Conservatives’ eight per cent.

Conclusion: a Conservative government would be a government without Quebec representation.

Jump out to Alberta, and there is a different story. There the Conservatives lead the parade at 46 per cent, with the Liberals at 31 per cent and the NDP at 15 per cent.

Conclusion: a Liberal win will leave Alberta once again with two or three seats in the national government.

But it was mostly the poll results in Ontario that pushed Paul Martin off the diving board. That province registered a nine point bump up in Liberal fortunes to 49 per cent, in effect a Liberal sweep and a majority government. The Conservatives sank seven per cent to an impotent 25 per cent of the electorate in that province.

And here on the Atlantic shores, those polled gave no indication that Stephen Harper’s slagging of our work ethic is in any way forgiven. The Liberals polled 47 per cent and the Conservatives 30 per cent, with the NDP at 18 per cent.

Now a poll is, as they say, merely a snapshot of the way things are now. As well, it’s fair comment to question why, with poll after poll showing a lessening of support for the government, a sudden and significant reversal of Liberal fortunes takes place?

Is it merely an anomaly, or does one poll represent reversal of a trend? For if polls are any use as an indicator of public opinion, they are only useful if there is a trend line. That is especially so if there is no particular reason why there should be a turnaround, and certainly there was nothing in the news the week of that poll that would suggest a Liberal love-in.

Indeed, the same poll that indicated the Liberals surging ahead, recorded 59 per cent of the people believing the Liberals do not deserve to be re-elected. That would seem to mean that as bad as the buggers are, they are better than the rest of a bad lot.

It would also suggest that we, as a nation, have no hope that anyone we elect will have the will or the ability to make our lives better. Take “hope” out of the political equation, and we are left only with cynicism and a resigned acceptance of political immorality as the way democracy works.

There seems little doubt that Brian Mulroney’s lasting legacy is not only the fracturing of his own political party, but of the national political system.

Political parties were once formed by like-minded individuals bound together by some sort of political vision, coalescing around leaders who personified that vision and were willing to risk their political fortunes in obtaining the political power needed to put that vision into action.

Trudeau was the last of those visionary leaders.

Mulroney represents the first of the new breed, wherein political visionaries were replaced with political managers and leaders were replaced by political CEOs.

So examine the birth of the Conservative party of Canada. Its roots come from a gathering of like-minded political and Christian evangelicalpeople primarily from the province of Alberta. Currently the main activity of the party is to try and weld together these ideas with those of the former Progressive Conservative Party before the wheels come off in public.

It is the political version of trying to make a political silk purse from an ideological sow’s ear so as to occupy the centre of the political median, which is where and how governments get elected in this country.

It is an exercise in political management — not political idealism.

Meanwhile, the Liberals slog through scandal after scandal until the mind numbs and grows weary of all the lying under oath and the current CEO of the party keeps promising to do it all differently but cannot tell us how or what he intends to do, possibly because he doesn’t know what or how to do whatever it is he is talking about.

One thing we know for sure: when it comes to the U.S., he and his advisors have a perfectly lousy sense of timing for a visit south. The fact is that “restoring our relationship” with the big guy, is not a priority for Canadians. Sucking up to the current president has never got us anywhere on any issue with the United States of America. Indeed, it is only when we stand up for what we believe that they notice us at all.

So now we come to this current impending opportunity to choose a new CEO. Maybe the best we can do about what is to transpire over the next couple of months is to recall the words of the Scottish satirist, John Arbuthnot (1667-1735),: “All political parties die at last from swallowing their own lies.”