Embittered by the way Brian Mulroney ran the PC party into the ground, federal Tories waited the better part of a decade before breathing the man's name again. Obsessed with putting forward a good public face, Liberals are already more forgiving toward Paul Martin - as evidenced by some leadership candidates approvingly citing his achievements on the campaign trail. But they shouldn't be. If anything, the Liberals should be more mad at Martin than the Tories were at Mulroney.

For everything that went wrong later on, what Mulroney inherited was a party desperately in need of some swagger - and that's precisely what he gave it.

In stark contrast, Martin inherited the country's dominant party - one with more swagger than it knew what to do with. And by the time he was done with it, little more than two years later, it had been reduced to a snivelling side-show.

On the surface, the party isn't in such bad shape. It has 103 seats - not the sort of decimation that often accompanies a long-time government being punted from office. But today, with a leadership race that's not inspiring even card-carrying Liberals, a miserable performance in the House of Commons and low polling numbers, they're carrying themselves like a party settling in for a long haul in the wilderness.

Martin had some help getting them to this point, courtesy of the sponsorship scandal Jean Chretien left waiting for him. But it wasn't Adscam, which the Liberals overcame sufficiently to preserve minority power in 2004, that has them in such dire straits today. It is the manner in which Martin robbed them of any sense of who they were.

The Liberals weren't exactly innovative policy wizards under Chretien, but they were confidently professional. The "Liberal brand" that they remain so fond of talking about was one of competent management, prudent decisions and a self-assured manner.

Under Martin, it was something different altogether. Eager to prove himself superior to his predecessor, and carrying the desperate manner of someone terrified of being disliked, he stammered his way through his time in office - from the "Mad as Hell" tour that epitomized his ham-handed response to Adscam, to pie-in-the-sky promises he could never live up to, and on through disastrous dealings with the provinces that made a hash of equalization.

In between he went from eccentric (hanging out in a tent with Gaddafi) to weak-kneed (supporting gay marriage without ever endorsing it) to conniving (the floor-crossing deal with Belinda Stronach that ultimately backfired). When he and his inner circle got cocky, they looked ridiculous -- dancing on tabletops to celebrate Stronach's defection and bragging to reporters about their prowess. But mostly, they spent two years running scared.

Nothing was more pathetic - and more damaging to the Liberals' self-perception - than Martin's flailing final campaign. There were the impromptu pledges to ditch federal use of the notwithstanding clause and the laughable attack ads claiming the Tories were going to flood cities with troops. There was an embarrassing dalliance with Buzz Hargrove and the Martinites' endless string of amateurish gaffes ("beer and popcorn" is only the most memorable one). And worst of all, there were Martin's sweaty, wild-eyed performances each and every day.

The result was a rapid transition from a slick political machine to a laughingstock. And what we're seeing now is that a simple change at the top won't be enough to reverse that.

Even with Martin's scorched-earth approach to replacing Chretien having driven away much of the party's talent, any leadership contest featuring a leading intellectual (Michael Ignatieff), a former premier (Bob Rae), a young and charismatic former minister (Scott Brison) and promising federal novices (Gerard Kennedy, Martha Hall Findlay) should be proving buzz-worthy. But because they're chasing such a tarnished prize -- the helm of a party with no ideas, no money and no identity -- they're mostly being ignored. And when we do tune in, it's mostly to mock them (can you say "Joe Volpe"?).

By various accounts, their baggage is too heavy. Their fundraising is too sketchy. Their debates are too boring. Their ideas are too few. There are too many candidates.

This is exactly the sort of delight the media took during the 1990s in poking fun at the hapless disunited right - and the sort of thing the Liberals never expected to deal with. But swagger is a funny thing. You can spend years and years cultivating it, and with every day your opponents gets more frustrated. Then you lose it thanks to the bumbling of one man, and you can't for the life of you figure out how to get it back.