MONTREAL - Standing among the very few Liberals who bothered to come out to show their support for Paul Martin in his home riding last night, I couldn't help but think back to the last time I was in Montreal witnessing a little slice of political history.

It was 10 months ago, and the Conservatives seemed to be falling apart at the seams. As the local media snorted contemptuously at the party's decision to hold its first national convention in a province where it was a non-factor, dissidents patrolled the convention floor's hallways campaigning against Stephen Harper while social conservatives handed out anti-Charter buttons. Deputy leader Peter MacKay was openly picking fights with Harper while his equally ambitious girlfriend, Belinda Stronach, threw a lavish party designed to upstage the rest of the weekend's events.

Through it all, Martin's cadre of advisors were having a good laugh. What they didn't realize was that the Tories had one big advantage over them: They were capable of learning from their mistakes. And that weekend was their turning point.

It started with pulling back from the brink midway through the convention - everyone making nice while delegates voted for a moderate package of policies that helped the party shed its extremist tag. But it was what happened to their leader afterward that made the biggest difference.

Accused of running an unprofessional shop, he made wholesale changes to his office - from firing his communications team to hiring a new chief of staff. Accused of being a poor team player, he learned to delegate. Accused of being too angry, he learned to smile.

The ability to embrace change set Harper apart from his Liberal counterpart.

When he solemnly promised last election night to "do better" because Canadians "expect more from us," it was mistakenly assumed that Martin realized his own performance had been lacking. We now know it was just another veiled shot at his predecessor. Even having been reduced to a minority government, the Martinites had no concept that they'd had a middling first few months in office, that shallow rhetoric didn't amount to a coherent vision and that their party was suffering from years of internecine warfare that they'd initiated. In their fantasy-land version of events, Martin had heroically overcome Jean Chretien's sins.

Incredibly, the Martinites had an even more triumphalist reaction a year later, when their foundering government was rescued only by an unsavoury bit of floor-crossing. On the night their government held on by a tied vote in the House of Commons, they should have been contemplating how to turn things around. Instead, they threw themselves a raucous party at which the prime minister's chief of staff danced atop a table with Belinda Stronach.

And so the Martin Liberals came to this election exactly as they came to the last one - with a lacklustre policy record and a campaign strategy that revolved entirely around demonizing Harper. When the new and improved Tory leader was unveiled, it became clear that only one party had been treading water.

It will be Martin's inner circle that will shoulder much of the blame for the Liberals' humbling fall from power. But that blame should really be directed at the man who accepted their mediocrity.

After years of rallying around their leader, one gets the sense that even most Liberals now know that. Sure, there were the usual senior Martinites here last night going down with the ship. But the scene around them told a different story.

Even in Liberal-rich Montreal, there were more journalists in the room than supporters of the erstwhile PM. There was little sense of coming out to pay tribute to the guy who 90% of Liberals elected to the leadership; just a sense of grim resignation.

It was hard to blame them, considering how they'd been let down. Martin needn't have won, necessarily. But he could have at least done something other than stick with a 2004 strategy frozen in amber.