THINGS CONTINUE TO GO BETTER FOR BOISCLAIR

During the 1993 federal election campaign, The Gazette published a
profile of Lucien Bouchard, then leader of the Bloc Quebecois, saying
his dead father had been a truck driver "with a drinking problem."

Nobody noticed, possibly because those four words were the only
mention in the article of drinking, and they did not appear until the
15th paragraph.

That is, nobody noticed until Bouchard drew attention to it himself,
the day after the article was published.

He distributed to the reporters on his campaign tour a letter to the
newspaper demanding a retraction, and changed his campaign itinerary
to make an emotional, unscheduled pilgrimage to his old family
homestead to defend his father's reputation.

Nobody played the victim in politics better than Bouchard. But Andre
Boisclair, who is on the verge of succeeding Bouchard as leader of
the Parti Quebecois, shows promise.

Last week, a Radio-Canada television program showed excerpts of
Governor-General Michaelle Jean's speech at the Parliamentary Press
Gallery dinner on Oct. 21, when politicians and journalists make
believe they're stand-up comics at a roast. Among her jokes were a
few allusions to Boisclair's admitted past cocaine use.

The painfully obvious puns on the words "coke" and "line" were no
harsher than the editorial cartoons in Quebec newspapers on the same
topic. But when Boisclair was asked about them this week, instead of
responding with his usual "no comment" to questions about cocaine, he
expressed Bouchard-like indignation that the governor-general would
say such "out-of-place" things in public.

So Boisclair doesn't mind talking about his cocaine use after all, as
long as it suits his purpose. And here his purpose was to play the victim.

This week's flare-up of the controversy surrounding Boisclair's
cocaine use actually helped him.

It allowed him to appeal to the sympathy of a public that appears to
be confused between an election to choose a possible future premier
and a reality-show popularity contest.

Even the set for the candidates' debates resembles that of a reality
show, with letters on their lecterns forming the word "La Course"
(The Race). And since the policies in the recently adopted party
program leave room only for nuance, the election is not a contest of
ideas, but of personalities. It's not just the phone-in voting system
that has turned this election into Sovereignist Idol.

So Boisclair is not a candidate who, as a cabinet minister, was so
immature, irresponsible, egotistical, arrogant, self-indulgent and
possibly self-destructive as to use an illegal drug.

Instead, he has been cast in the much more sympathetic role of
handsome, young, reformed bad boy, who must pass the test of ordeal
by scrum, tormented by loud, rude and for the most part not terribly
telegenic journalists. It's not hard to pick the sentimental favourite here.

It's certainly not Boisclair's leading rival, Pauline Marois, whom
the Boisclair camp deftly put on the defensive by accusing her of
being behind this week's furor over cocaine, which was really about
Boisclair's overall personal fitness for leadership.

Marois happened to have been negotiating a stop-Boisclair alliance
with the four fringe candidates who said Boisclair should either
answer all questions on his cocaine use or withdraw his candidacy.

But the comments of the otherwise forgettable four on their way into
this week's debate on education, in answer to reporters' questions,
actually hurt Marois and helped Boisclair, because they distracted
attention away from the debate itself.

Even though education is supposed to be Boisclair's strongest issue,
it was Marois who landed the sound-bite knockout punch when she
demonstrated his cost figures didn't add up and told him to "go back
and do your homework again."

In fact, except for when Boisclair took on the party's language hawks
three weeks ago, his performance in the debates has not been as
impressive as his polling numbers.

But the shouting about cocaine is drowning out the debates, as well
as creating a wave of sympathy that's carrying Boisclair to the leadership.