A couple of years ago, I had dinner with Jack Layton. And I'm pretty sure it resulted in a few misconceptions. At his suggestion, we dined at a cozy and downtown Toronto cafe. Seated in a tight corner of the room, the gregarious NDP leader insisted on sharing a bottle of wine and some appetizers. And at the end of the meal, we had a brief dispute about who would pay.

Noticing this debate, and that we'd worked it out, our waitress turned up at our table. "Don't worry," she said. "This just means you'll have to have another date." And before that had sunk in, she was gone.

For the record, nothing inappropriate was going on. (Thankfully I don't think she had any idea who Layton was, let alone who I was, so rumours never spread.) But all this is a long and slightly embarrassing way of saying that I've had an opportunity to speak with him at some length, away from the cameras he gravitates toward like moths to a flame. As a result, I know first-hand that he has an active and vigorous mind for policy, that he usually does his homework before opening his mouth, and that he's capable of understanding the nuances of complicated and controversial policy issues.

The result is that, more than once, I've found myself defending him against allegations that he's all sizzle and no steak - arguing that, however glib he may appear in sound bites, there's more to him than meets the eye. But it's becoming increasingly clear that, however deep his understanding of individual issues, that doesn't stop Layton from being an inherently shallow leader.

There's shallowness in the sense of not understanding complex issues. And then there's the kind of shallowness in which you understand those issues, but choose to play dumb for the sake of expediency. The kind in which opportunism trumps responsibility. And that, increasingly, is becoming the halmark of Layton's leadership.

For whatever reason, the leader of a party that has no seats in Quebec is obsessed with breaking through there. And in pursuit of this pipe dream, he appears willing to say just about anything - no matter how much it ultimately discredits him.

Last weekend's national convention in Quebec City brought out the worst in him.

On one hand, to try to win over the anti-war crowd in the province with its biggest constituency, he motored past a defensible position on Afghanistan (that we shouldn't stay there until 2009, as the Tories have pledged) to a completely indefensible one (that we should leave our Afghani and NATO partners in the lurch by pulling out immediately). If that's not bad enough, the run-up to the convention saw his much-mocked call to "negotiate" with the Taliban - a suggestion that's a complete betrayal of his party's usual commitment to human rights and women's rights in particular.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, Layton made clear that the NDP is prepared to sell out both the country and his party's policy objectives if it'll lure some nationalist voters away from the Bloc Quebecois. However much he wants to pretend that asymetrical federalism - which he's wholeheartedly embraced - isn't mutually exclusive with the NDP's ambitious big-government aims, it's a bogus argument.

Of course, a party that has no real chance of forming government doesn't necessarily need its positions to be logical or consistent. But the question Layton and his charges need to ask themselves is whether they're happy with a future in which the best they do is pander for a few extra seats while hanging around the margins of Canadian politics.

Until recently, at least, Layton's approach has been exactly what the doctor ordered for the NDP. Under his predecessor, Alexa McDonough, the party had all but fallen off the map - so boring and predictable and utterly inconsequential that it earned just 8% of the vote in the 2000 election. It needed some flash, some energy, some media savvy and some willingness to take risks.

Layton has delivered all of that since taking over the leadership in 2002, and he's more than doubled both the NDP's seat count and its share of the popular vote. More importantly, he's made it relevant again - forcing his way into every debate, rather than glumly sitting on the sidelines.

But having done that, one has the sense that he's hit a wall. Left-wing voters have come back to the NDP after migrating to the Liberals in the 1990s, but the rest of the electorate - some of whom would have to come on board for any real shot at government - still doesn't take the NDP seriously. Now, frustrated with trying to prove to skeptical moderates that he can be taken seriously, he's resorted to pandering to a few segments of the population to try to win seats incrementally.

In effect, it's a cop-out. And it's a wasted opportunity, since the Liberals are as vulnerable as they'll ever be to bleeding supporters - especially if that party's left wing winds up unnerved by a Michael Ignatieff leadership victory.

The answer isn't to toss Layton overboard; there's nobody better waiting in the wings, and New Democrats handed him an overwhelming endorsement in Quebec City. But unless voters begin to see a little more of the Layton I saw over dinner, and less of the snake-oil salesman who preens for the cameras, it's doubtful he'll be able to take them much further.