MONTREAL - Say this for Stephen Harper's Conservatives: Their conventions are a hell of a lot more colourful than the Liberals'.

So predictable that it would have been possible to report on it without ever showing up, the Grits' recent gathering in Ottawa had none of the political theatre that played out as the Tories convened here this weekend.

We didn't, for instance, get to see the Liberals' deputy leader blowing a gasket over a seemingly obscure amendment to the party's constitution and ominously predicting that the entire organization could split in two as a result.

At the Liberals' event, the closest any leadership aspirant came to openly wooing would-be supporters was Scott Brison's relatively modest hospitality suite. (And just in case anyone thought he was being disloyal to Paul Martin, he had a life-size cut-out of the Prime Minister on display.) Two weeks later, younger and hipper Conservatives (these things are admittedly relative) were fleeing Harper's tame social reception in favour of Belinda Stronach's absurdly swanky shindig at a boutique hotel. By 11:30 p.m., when Tories were sipping free blue martinis and singing along as Tom Cochrane strummed Life Is a Highway in a packed room, saying that the leader had been upstaged would be like saying that Apollo Creed lost a narrow decision to Ivan Drago.

On the convention floor, Liberals were effusive in their praise of Martin. In Montreal, a centrist anti-Harper activist handed out nasty T-shirts and buttons, while religious Christians slid flyers under hotel doors pining for the return of Stockwell Day.

While the Grits meticulously avoided giving opponents any fodder, the Conservative-friendly Western Standard magazine handed out buttons responding to the Liberal gay marriage taunt of "It's the Charter, Stupid" with "It's the stupid Charter." As an observer from the PMO looked on with a mile-wide grin, Tories happily pinned the politically tone-deaf buttons to their lapels.

I could go on, but you get the point. The Liberals are heartless professionals; the Conservatives, like the Reformers and Canadian Alliance members before them, would sooner risk embarrassing themselves than fall in line behind their leader. And so on.

Except, that's not the weekend's whole story: This was a tale of two conventions.

Watch the Conservatives on Friday, when all the aforementioned silliness unfolded, and you were convinced they were back to being their own worst enemies. But the following day saw a party determined to avoid trouble.

Saturday's endless array of policy and constitutional votes was rife with pitfalls - and in years past, Reform or Alliance delegates would have fallen straight into them. But this time, cognizant of the greater good, a sizable chunk of that crowd joined with former Progressive Conservatives to steer the party away from them.

The amendment to delegate selection rules that had MacKay up in arms was defeated. Direct democracy initiatives, a Reform hallmark out of step with a party preparing to form government, were similarly shot down. Despite former MP Elsie Wayne ranting about murdering babies and society "going to hell in a handbasket," delegates voted to stay away from abortion if the party forms a government. An outspoken minority aside, they endorsed bilingualism. And not once was there a storm-out, or a blow-up, or any of the other histrionics reporters were hoping would make for a good story.

This is progress. On a good day, the Conservatives are starting to look like a professional party. The problem is, there are still too many bad days.

Under Harper, this still looks too much like the party Preston Manning built. To many, that's endearing. But the lingering bouts of amateurism and unwillingness to impose the discipline needed to stay on message - like, say, removing those anti-Charter buttons and the guy distributing them from sight as quickly as possible - prevent it from taking the next step forward.

That step, though, may not be far off. If Stronach replaces Harper after the next election, she and the Red Tories around her will probably have no qualms about doing whatever it takes to complete the party's professionalization.

Electoral success will likely follow. It's just too bad that Conservative conventions will get a lot more boring.