Locked in a fight for his political life, Dalton McGuinty threw away the style he adopted for the first three weeks of Ontario's election campaign.
Until Tuesday night, the Liberal Leader made a calm case that in times of economic uncertainty, his was the steadiest hand. But in the campaign's lone debate, he was anything but a soothing presence. Throwing around facts and figures at a frantic clip, waving his hands to the point of distraction and at one point more or less accusing his leading opponent of xenophobia, Mr. McGuinty was the most wired person on the stage.
He wasn't the only one who tried to turn impressions on their head. Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and the NDP's Andrea Horwath also sought to recast their image in an attempt to break the three-way logjam we have seen since the first week of the campaign.
But despite their better efforts, they most likely succeeded in hardening their own support rather than moving votes – leaving the province still careering toward its first minority government since the 1980s.
Mr. Hudak, who has come off through much of the campaign like a caricature of an opposition leader, put much effort into looking more like a premier. He rarely raised his voice, kept a check on his penchant for snappy sound bites, and generally came off as the most relaxed and comfortable of the three leaders.
Meanwhile, Ms. Horwath – whose entire campaign up to this point has revolved around presenting herself as a fresh face who refuses to practice politics the old way – seemed out to prove that she could trade punches with the best of them. She was vastly more confident and better-prepared than during her tentative performance in last week's dry-run Northern-issues debate. And she got off what was probably the line of the night – sharply interjecting, as Mr. McGuinty tried to explain his controversial cave-in this past weekend to opposition to a long-planned power-plant, that what has changed is that there's now an election campaign on.
But this has long looked like a referendum on Mr. McGuinty and that's one thing that didn't change on Tuesday night.
It was striking that the two opposition leaders, and Mr. Hudak in particular, were vastly more interested in talking about the incumbent's record than what they themselves have planned. In a segment that was kicked off by a question about the lack of big ideas in the campaign, Mr. Hudak spent almost the entire time talking about the current government's green-energy scheme – declining to pay much attention to a single proposal from his own platform.
Mr. McGuinty, meanwhile, was only fleetingly interested in trying to change the subject. There was the occasional attack on Ms. Horwath's plan to raise corporate taxes, and the alleged (and considerably exaggerated) $14-billion hole in Mr. Hudak's platform. And there was that insinuation of xenophobia, in which Mr. McGuinty said he wasn't "comfortable" with the PC Leader's opposition to foreign investment and foreign students and "foreign workers." But for the most part, he was a very eager participant in debate about his own record – green energy in particular receiving a seemingly endless amount of focus.
Liberal insiders say all this uncharacteristic assertiveness was needed to convey to voters that their leader has the fire in his belly needed for a third term. But the effect of the sort of McGuinty-on-steroids sprung on unsuspecting viewers is likely that those who already believed in him will believe in him more; those who disliked him will probably find even more reason to do so.
In a campaign that is as much about motivating supporters as it is about winning over converts, that should be enough to at least keep the Liberals competitive, no small feat for a two-term governing party. At the same time, anyone looking for reassurance that Mr. Hudak is ready to take the next step received it, and those parking their votes with the NDP probably now feel a little more secure marking their ballots that way.
In other words, the log jam may be even more set in place than it was coming in – no matter how frantic Mr. McGuinty's efforts were to break it.