Harper unplugged: The back-of-the-plane chat

Unable to sleep after Thursday's English-language debates, Prime Minister Stephen Harper got up at 3 a.m. and tried to unwind by watching the U.S. vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.
He would not say if it helped him sleep.
In an informal chat with reporters Saturday at the back of his campaign plane, Harper touched on that and several topics.
It was the fourth time in this campaign that he's wandered down the aisle from his seat in the front of the Air Canada Airbus 360 to the back rows of the plane where the media sit.
Tonight, he said he liked the debate format, particularly the in-the-round seating. He said he has no plans to become a political pundit once he leaves politics. And, as he and his staff shut their campaign down Sunday, he spoke about the value of rest and pacing in a long campaign.
At the end of his fourth week, a week which included two two-hour debates, Harper seemed to enjoy getting back on the campaign trail.
“It's been more enjoyable having you than having those four guys yelling at me for four hours,” Harper told the gaggle of reporters who had just finished eating a seafood medley or grilled chicken that had been served for dinner on the Conservative campaign plane.
Harper flew east right after the debates, spending time campaigning in Liberal ridings in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Harper said he enjoyed the format of the debates, particularly compared to previous years when the leaders would stand in a semi-circle behind podiums.
“It wasn't as close as it looked,” Harper said. “I preferred the seating. I think it was our [campaign's] suggestion. It wasn't quite the discussion we hoped but it still pulls it back a bit to a discussion which I think is impossible in the other format.
“I know on TV it sometimes seemed very heated. In fact, compared to the previous leaders' debates, the voices were not raised much at all,” Harper said.
He also said his campaign is unfolding, by and large, according to the broad outline he and his strategists mapped out ahead of time.
“We're doing what we wanted to do more or less,” Harper said. “What I've learned in both elections is that all wisdom about the election will emerge after it's over. And I've tried to avoid that. You can slip into a pattern that, if you lose, everything you did was wrong. And likewise, if you won, everything you did was right. And it gets interpreted in that way and sometimes factually inaccurately.”
When asked to cite an example of inaccurate reporting of those earlier campaigns, Harper cited a line, common among pundits, that in 2004, he wasted the last two days campaigning in Alberta, an area of the country where he already had support. Some suggested he ought to have spent those last few hours in the campaign pushing harder for votes in, for example, Ontario.
“Factual inaccuracies become an entrenched myth so you have to be careful. The 'two days' I spent in Alberta at the end of the campaign was half-a-day.”
What about 2006?
“The biggest myth about '06 was that we did everything right. We did some things wrong but if you guys haven't figured them out, I'm not going to share them with you.”
He was also asked how he was holding up after four weeks of campaigning.
“I'm feeling good. We've got better at pacing ourselves, I've got better and better at pacing myself, better and better at managing stress personally” he said.
Harper said he learned a valuable lesson about campaign pacing by looking at the 1980 federal election. In that campaign, Harper said, Joe Clark made a point of trying to do more campaign events than anyone else. His opponent, Pierre Trudeau did one message event a day, which is exactly what Harper does.
“And Trudeau won day in and day out. It's still instructive. It's not quantity [that wins a campaign]. Quantity helps but it's not about quantity.”
Personally, he says he's kept up his energy by finding time to rest. Unlike the other leaders, Harper has taken every Sunday on this campaign off in Ottawa with his family.
“There have been only two nights on this campaign I haven't had a good nights sleep — the two nights after the debate,” Harper said. “This was how I was in school. I always slept before exams. I could never sleep after exams because I always got so keyed up. I can't get back down again.”
And that's what led to his late-night viewing of the vice-presidential debate.
“I actually got of bed and watched it at 3 a.m.”
But he wouldn't name any winners or losers of that debate.
“I didn't watch it all. I don't want to express too many opinions. It was interesting, that's all.”
After spending a day with his family at 24 Sussex Drive, Harper will get back on his campaign plane Monday afternoon and will criss-cross the country, ending up in Calgary for election night on Oct. 14.
And he said that, unlike some politicians, such as former Liberal cabinet ministers Jean Lapierre, Sheila Copps, or Brian Tobin who have shown up on political talk shows as pundits, he has no such desire once he leaves politics.
“I've always said privately, I'm going to enjoy all this time, make the best of it, but when it's over, it's over.”

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