Message over matter

According to this puff piece from the Globe, Harper is going to “project competence” in his cabinet choices this time around.

Although competence would be a refreshing change and certainly a much better choice than incompetence, it is probably still setting too lofty a goal for this group.

But get used to the terminology, because competence will be the key message as they try to project that the electorate has somehow selected this experienced team.

Here’s an unnamed CPC official, fresh out of a marketing planning session.

"The overall message for everything that we are doing is that we're carrying on with competent government," a senior Conservative official said yesterday.

"We have real strong people, and we elected really strong people as well. That's what you're going to see."

I mean who knew. All I thought they had a was an arrogant, ideological leader with a patchwork of western reformers and former, failed Ontario ministers, the odd attack dog thrown in and a huge advertising budget to slander the opposition.

In the end it won’t really matter, as this Globe marketing piece demonstrates, they won’t really have to be competent, they will only have to project it, right.