Midway through the last election, the National Citizens' Coalition used a series of radio ads to make the bold suggestion that Ed Broadbent was either Karl Marx or the Ayatollah Khomeini (or both). The three, it seemed, were uncannily alike in their beliefs. Plus you never saw them together.
In its emphasis on the party leader, as much as the hyperbole of its claim, the NCC's ''very, very scary'' tack was typical of the 1988 campaign - an election ostensibly about the historic issue of free trade.
The very complexity of the issue put that much more focus on the personalities, validating political theorist Herbert Simon's contention that the electorate judges the credibility of sources, rather than the weight of the evidence. Four words summarized the campaign: Whom do you trust? It will be a source of wonder to future historians that, on this basis, Brian Mulroney won.
Certainly, the Tories tried to keep Mulroney out of it. Through the first part of the campaign, the Prime Minister seemed incapable of independent thought. Every venture of opinion began not ''I think'' or ''I believe'' but ''eight out of ten premiers think,'' or ''the Economic Council of Canada believes.''
But all that was achieved with this attempt to ''low-bridge'' the free trade issue was to leave people with the feeling that Mulroney could not make a strong, positive case for the deal, or at any rate was not himself so personally and emotionally dedicated to his cause as the Liberals' John Turner was to his.
MULRONEY SNOOKERED
The effect of the televised debate was to crystallize these vague impressions into a real fear that Mulroney had been snookered. Maybe this thing was as complicated as Turner said. Maybe Mulroney just didn't know what he had signed. Panic ensued.
Three things turned this around. One, Mulroney's famous hot-stove-league debate with a pair of elderly hecklers after a speech in Victoria. This said that finally, the Tories were taking public concerns seriously, and were prepared to address them directly.
Two, the Tories began aping Turner's habit of carrying around a dog-eared copy of the text of the deal. This assumed totemic importance, like the conch in Lord of the Flies: the tangible representation of authority. Tory ministers lost no opportunity to thump the text for emphasis in their speeches. This said: I know this document backwards and forwards. Nothing's got by me.
Three, the Tories went after Turner. This aroused a good deal of tut-tutting at the time, and still does. Even the normally phlegmatic Robert Mason Lee, in his perceptive analysis of the election, One Hundred Monkeys, waxes indignant. ''The Conservative strategy committee hit upon the simplest expedient available. The Tories would call John Turner a liar, over and over and over again . . . . [It was! an outrageous plan to undermine a man's reputation in public, to portray him alternately as a conniving grasper, a deceitful fraud, and a dangerous lunatic.''
Well, what else could they say? One could not call the many bizarre and extraordinary things Turner said about the free trade agreement anything but lies and still be truthful. For that matter, the Tories hardly initiated the hostilities. Turner, remember, stated openly on national television that his opponent was in league with foreign interests to betray the country; various Liberal ads played upon the same theme of treason. Yet this was, apparently, fair game.
To call your opponent a liar, moreover, is hardly a percentage play. The tactic could just as easily have backfired. One can imagine Turner - Honest John Turner - roaring like a wounded lion at this dirty Tory trick.
No, one doesn't have to imagine it. That's exactly what he did. Only it didn't work. The charge stuck. That says that at the back of the public's mind was a nagging feeling he had overstated his case. As long as no one called him on it, he could get away with it. But as soon as the Tories fought back, Turner's credibility collapsed.
More important than what it did to Turner was what this tactic did for Mulroney. The Canadian public, above all, wanted to see Mulroney come out swinging, to show that, at long last, he believed in something.
The voters were basically attuned to the free trade message. All the polls showed the public had a sound understanding of the necessity of international competitiveness. But they had to see some evidence of commitment on the part of its chief advocate. It wasn't until after the debate that they finally got it. This election, in the end, was about the blooding of Brian Mulroney.