Portrait of a frightening man

From an article in Sunday's Ottawa Sun

MAUGERVILLE, N.B. -- It is a dreary Saturday morning in small-town New Brunswick, and Stephen Harper isn't exactly warming hearts among the overflow crowd of Conservative faithful packed into the old two-room schoolhouse. On this day, the Conservative leader is in an ugly mood, the Iceman's habitual cool heading toward the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

Even a reporter's friendly "good morning, Stephen" is returned with silence and a withering glare from those frigid, malamute-blue eyes.

The cause of Harper's big chill was the Tories' big gaffe.

OK, I can understand that Harper couldn't have been pleased with the turn of events after Friday's Conservative campaign boondoggle. But worse political tides have happened to better men, and we don't usually see them stomping around displaying their anger to their followers and any media whose path they happen to cross.

Maybe Stephen Harper doesn't realize, but he's running for Prime Minister. A Prime Minister takes more heat than Harper has yet been exposed to, and if this is how Harper reacts to a little bit of media criticism then it's worrying to say the least, how he would act in the House, during Question Period, during scrums, in Cabinet, in meetings with international heads-of-state.

He isn't acting very Prime Ministerial at all.