But there is a third, no less fundamental question to be addressed, and that is what sort of politics the party intends to practise. That is, beyond leadership, beyond policies, beyond even the existential dilemma alluded to above -- why are we doing this? -- there lurks an even more basic question, though one which many politicians never quite get around to asking themselves: What are we doing? What does it mean, to practise politics? What is politics?

The authors of a new book, Gritlock, are firm on the first question -- the Alliance and the Tories must align their forces, if only in coalition form, if the infamous Grits are ever to be dislodged. Such co-operation, they claim, fudging the second question, can be effected without undue sacrifice of either party's principles, as the conflict between them is overdrawn. These can be debated at another time.

It's the third question, and the authors' answer to it, that I want to take up now. The authors, Peter White and Adam Daifallah, can draw on much experience in conservative politics, the former as Brian Mulroney's principal secretary, the latter as a leader in the student wings. Their advice will strike many, particularly those inside the political world, as uncontroversial. But it embodies everything that is wrong with our politics today.

It begins with a lament at the skill with which the Liberals have destroyed the public image of their leading opponents: from Stanfield through Clark, Mulroney, and Manning to the utter dismantling of Stockwell Day. "Modern campaigns have largely become battles in image definition," they write, and Liberal strategists are "the unchallenged masters of this particular form of character assassination." Fair enough. What, then, is their advice to conservatives? To become as skilled in this "black art," and as ruthless, as the Liberals. The debacle of 2000, they submit, began with Mr. Day's "agenda of respect," a textbook case in how not to run a campaign. Politics is war by other means, they write, quoting an American strategist: It is essential to define your opponent before he defines you. The task, in short, is to "become as politically professional and expert as our opponents, while remaining true to our principles in a way that they do not." It's beguiling, but it won't wash. The wall the authors would erect, between means and ends, politics and principles, campaigns and governing, is an illusory one. How you campaign is how you govern. Once the fundamental commitment to political expediency has been made, everything else becomes subordinate to it. It becomes the principle. You can't campaign with ruthless disdain for political ethics, then turn around and govern like Marcus Aurelius, for the end of one campaign is only the start of another.

And even if you could, the public would not let you. Politicians, by the way they conduct themselves, teach the public the standards of behaviour they should expect: The incumbent Prime Minister is a master at defining expectations down. But suppose a government tried to do the right thing, having come to power by doing the expedient thing. It would be devoured by a more ruthless opponent. Having conditioned the public to judge their leaders by the standards of the gladiators ring, it could hardly expect to be treated differently.

But now suppose we imagine politics in a different way: not as a battle between parties, but as a dialogue with the public. What was once a strictly internal matter, with its own set of rules and its own peculiar language, is suddenly infiltrated, as air invades a smoke- filled room, by the standards and behaviour we expect of each other in private life. It isn't only outright lies, which are officially frowned upon even now, that would then be off limits, but the merest act of misleading: indeed, anything smacking of guile. The tools of the politician's trade --bombast, hyperbole, sentimentality, cliche -- which now are tolerated, or even expected, would then be seen for what they are: species of falsehood.

The politician who adhered to the standards of private life; who refrained from slandering his opponents' record as much as he avoided boasting about his own; who refused even to glamorize himself, via syrupy commercials and stridently upbeat rallies; who discarded, in short, the whole tawdry apparatus of the modern campaign; that politician might, provided he were consistent, make his opponents sound suddenly tinny, off-key. For he would be talking directly to the public, engaging them as electors, rather than treating them as spectators to a game: not as fixed as wrestling, perhaps, but just as phony.