MONTREAL - It's probably not something I'm supposed to say, especially when the media is starting to enjoy its tastiest feeding frenzy since Stockwell Day was torn limb from limb. But in the spirit of the frank discussion we've been promised here, I'll be honest: I feel sorry for Stephen Harper.

Perhaps that's the reaction the Conservative leader wants. Something of a conspiracy-monger, he's often implied the mainstream media have it in for him.

For the most part, such victimhood has been imaginary. The media didn't cost Harper last year's election - it tried to hand it to him, building him up during the campaign's first three weeks and seizing on every opportunity to tear Paul Martin down. Only once he managed within a span of a few days to accuse his opponents of supporting child porn, stop talking to most major news organizations and commence an ill-timed wave of "West wants in" triumphalism did coverage go sour.

Nor can Harper blame his failure to build post-election momentum on anybody but himself. Nobody forced him to disappear for weeks on end, then resurface full of sour complaints.

The truth is, Harper has mostly been his own worst enemy since the Conservatives made him their leader 12 months ago. But as the party gathers for its first ever policy convention, matters are spinning out of his hands.

Harper is getting perilously close to the point reached by failed leaders - Kim Campbell, for instance, and the unfortunate Day - where it stops mattering what they do. The narrative having been firmly established that they're beyond hope, every decision is interpreted as a disappointment, every attempt at damage control dismissed as making things worse.

As William Watson noted on this page yesterday, the run-up to this weekend was a good example of this phenomenon. Had Harper initially done nothing to prevent issues like abortion and gay marriage from dominating the agenda, he would have been pilloried for letting hard-liners steer the party off course. But when he attempted to limit debate, he was blasted from all sides - including from social liberals - for his authoritarianism. And when he responded to that near-universal criticism by relenting, he was widely mocked for being too easily swayed.

Harper found himself in a similar no-win situation with the recent budget vote. Had his MPs all voted "nay," he would have been criticized for trying to send the country to an early election that nobody wanted. Had they all voted in favour, it would have been perceived as an endorsement of the Liberal agenda. So he tried to send a low-risk message by having them abstain en masse - only to be belittled for his unwillingness to take a stand.

On almost all his big-picture decisions, too, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. When he attempts to shift his party to the centre of the spectrum on health care or foreign policy, he's accused of having no principles. And when he takes more conservative positions, he's labeled out of touch with mainstream opinion.

The truly unfortunate part of all this is that, owing to a minority parliament, Harper finds himself caught betwixt and between. If it were three years until the next election, he'd be able to step aside. But with the next campaign likely to start within the next 12 months, it's too late for his party to find a replacement. Meanwhile, he lacks enough time to go back to the drawing board - as, say, Dalton McGuinty did between being left for dead in the 1999 Ontario election and winning a majority four years later.

This weekend, then, becomes Harper's last best chance. Merely emerging unscathed from the convention won't be enough; to break the spiral, he needs to dazzle us with the best speech of his career, or a bold new policy agenda, or ... something, anything to break the endless cycle of criticism.

Otherwise, Harper's main job will soon be to keep the leader's seat warm for Belinda Stronach or some other fresh face. And seeing that happen to someone of his intellect and ambition really would be cause for pity.