Leaders on The National: How They Rate

Every night on The National they run the standard four stories covering the party leaders’ tours across the country for this General Election. Here are my impressions after Day One:

• Stephen Harper - Surprisingly relaxed and looking a lot less like a wax museum figure than he usually does; he’s dressing better too. Performed better than I expected, and is doing a good job at covering up the secret “lets ship all the poor people to Australia” agenda that others report him to have. 6/10
• Paul Martin - That blue checked shirt took 10 years off him. Also looked relaxed, but the whole “Stephen Harper is the anti-Christ” approach is already wearing thin, and I predict it will backfire because it makes Harper more credible, not less. The “let’s visit the greenhouse and help the little children plant seeds” was over the top. 5/10
• Gilles Duceppe - He’s not running for the top job, so he can be more relaxed than the other guys. He used to feel a lot like a high school vice principal; he’s a lot friendlier now, more like a that socialist friend of your parents who used to drop by from time to time. 8/10
• Jack Layton - The green hues in the backdrop are nice. The prancing through Chinatown was a little too composed and artificial. The speech was well executed: he got all the righteous indignation out of his system before the campaign, and now he looks like the calm alternative to the warring Harper and Martin. Performed better than I expected. 7/10

Where was the Green Party, by the way? If they’re running a candidate in every riding, don’t they deserve equal treatment? The existing setup means the CBC is an agent of status quo preservation.