LONDON, Ont. - Drive up to any Tim Horton's in Canada and the coffee will taste the same, the decor will be familiar and the menu largely identical -- a comforting feeling of familiarity and consistency.
Stephen Harper's Conservative team has run a Tim Horton's campaign: consistent in style, message and tone. No particular local flavour, nothing rough around the edges and no experimenting.
Close your eyes at his penultimate event in London, Ont., and you could really be in Burnaby, B.C. on the first week of the campaign -- but for the voice of a lone protester who somehow worked his way into the partisan crowd Sunday.
A local candidate dutifully introduces Harper, noting his experience as an economist and how Canada needs his steady hand on the wheel of power.
The stage is always set the same way -- a large square platform set in the middle of the room for Harper to roam the stage like a latter-day Phil Donohue. Supporters, who have all pre-registered to enter the various gymnasiums, banquet halls and ballrooms, are layered stadium-style around three sides of the stage.
And then there's Harper speeches, laden with warnings about what would happen to the Canadian economy should his party not be handed a majority. In the final week, the spectre of a Liberal-led coalition bent on toppling a minority Tory government has been replaced by the looming threat of an NDP-led coalition.
That led to a final-week appeal to Liberal voters who might be skittish about the NDP in power.
"If traditional Liberal voters don't want an NDP government, they certainly don't want an NDP government backed by the Bloc Quebecois, friends, the NDP will need the support of the Bloc Quebecois to take over," Harper said Sunday.
"Think how unstable such a government would be for Canada.'
Harper's strict adherence to message has been one of the hallmarks of his success over the past five years.
During the brief news conferences he has held daily during the campaign, he has not put a foot wrong with an ill-advised off-hand remark as he did with harmful effect in 2008 when he dissed the arts community.
His photo opportunities have been nearly all rigidly staged affairs with a pre-selected cast of supporters or small business owners. There were no chance encounters with Canadians who might simply be curious about the leader or the genuinely undecided, let alone a supporter of another party.
There was one small gesture in that direction Sunday. Harper met with a University of Western Ontario student who had been kicked out of a Conservative rally early in the campaign after it was discovered she had posted a picture of herself with Michael Ignatieff on Facebook. Awish Aslam and three of her friends spoke to Harper on his bus away from the prying cameras.
But Harper needed to appeal to dispirited Liberals in the dying hours of the campaign after spending the last several years trying to destroy the Liberal brand. His challenge is not unlike Tim Horton's attempting to suddenly entice Starbucks drinkers to abandon their caramel macchiatos and embrace the double-double.
Lines were added to Harper's stump speech to encourage them to vote Conservative rather than risk an NDP government, but his events weren't widened to allow some of those Liberal tire-kickers into his show room. The campaign made a show of right-wing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's endorsement of Harper, but hasn't been able to produce any high-profile Liberals who have made the same decision.
Harper's message contains little about the social issues that might resonate with centrist or left-of-centre Liberals -- nothing about child care, the arts, social housing, the state of Canada's aboriginal communities, home care or student debt.
"The Conservative party has been focused, and will continue to be focused on the economy and on jobs, only the Conservative party can protect Canada's economic advantage, complete our economic recovery, and move our economy forward," Harper said told the London, Ont. crowd.
The majority he has sought now rests not on whether Liberal voters will choose his party, but rather on whether they split the vote with the NDP in enough ridings to push the Conservatives over the line.
With a renowned organization across the country designed to get out the vote, Stephen Harper's Conservatives might just do it without learning how make a macchiato.
