If Stephen Harper sat down with the express purpose of outlining everything that is wrong with his leadership of the Conservatives, he couldn't possibly do better than the document he produced last weekend.

And the amazing thing is, he did it all in just five short paragraphs.

There's no way of knowing whether Mr. Harper personally wrote the letter that appeared above his name in Monday's National Post. Party leaders rarely author their own texts; that's what their aides are for. But if it was Mr. Harper's communications shop that decided the best way to respond to a critical editorial was by attacking the newspaper that had the audacity to run it, that's even more telling.

It would be easy to dismiss the letter out-of-hand on the basis that its main message - the Post isn't really a conservative newspaper because it attacked the Conservative leader, even though it attacked him for not being conservative enough - is completely absurd. Easy, that is, if it weren't so symptomatic of the lack of professionalism that has plagued the Conservatives under Mr. Harper's leadership.

This is a party that seems incapable of taking a deep breath and thinking through its actions before taking them. It's the same party, recall, that ceded the momentum it had built up over the first three weeks of this year's election campaign by accusing its opponents of supporting child porn. The same party whose leader spouted off about fundamentally changing the nature of Canadian federalism because it seemed like a good idea at the time, not because it had anything to do with official policy. The same party so consumed by its dislike of Scott Brison, the Tory-turned-Liberal Cabinet minister, that it circulated an embarrassingly amateurish press release this fall dredging up a minor tax dispute from several years ago.

It is a party, in other words, that is amateurish, undisciplined, needlessly confrontational and frequently mean-spirited - all characteristics that came shining through in Mr. Harper's latest missive.

For all their warts, the Liberals still have a general idea of how to play the game. They understand that messages have to be carefully honed, and that policies and statements can't be sent out without due consideration of the consequences. That's why it's impossible to imagine Paul Martin - notoriously thin-skinned though he and his advisors may be - responding to criticism in the Toronto Star by accusing it of not being liberal.

Newspapers are not beyond criticism. That's why we publish letters to the editor each day. And trust me, nobody here is losing sleep over whether or not Mr. Harper is mad at us. But a politician's job, especially while languishing in opposition, is to make friends rather than enemies.

The Conservatives' problem is that they either don't realize that, or they don't care. When they're criticized in the media, it's the media's fault. When they're rejected by voters, it's the voters' fault. Hypersensitive to criticism, their response appears to be that it's your problem if you don't like them - a curious position for a party that polls show is still trailing a thoroughly mediocre government by double digits.

Those familiar with the men and women at the top of the Tory food chain suggest that many of them are still in shock over their failure to win government in June. From their perspective, they did everything right; it's just that the media conspired against them.

As often as they repeat it, that theory isn't going to get any less delusional. For much of the campaign, the Conservatives were treated with kid gloves while Mr. Martin was savaged. That's not because journalists suddenly swung to the right, but because the favourite storyline was that the Liberals were falling apart at the seams.

All the Conservatives had to do was avoid mistakes. Instead, they put out the disastrous child porn press releases (which Mr. Harper refused to fully back away from), were further damaged by their candidates spouting off about gays, abortion and every other hot-button issue imaginable, and then turned off vote-rich Ontario by sending their leader on a triumphalist "West wants in" tour of Alberta in the campaign's final days.

Six months later, they still haven't gotten their act together. Their communications is sloppy, Mr. Harper is making no discernible effort to improve his lacklustre people skills and the party's message is still so fuzzy that it continues to be defined by its critics.

Political pros recognize their own deficiencies, and work to correct them. Political amateurs just blame everyone else for noticing them.

The Conservatives are still stuck in amateur hour.