After Jean Charest became Quebec Liberal leader in 1998, it was said that if you didn't like a position he took, all you had to do was wait 48 hours for him to change it.
And it was said that Charest reversed himself so often that to ensure the safety of anyone standing behind him, he should have been equipped with a warning signal like the one on a truck that starts beeping when it's about to back up.
In his defence, Charest had been FedExed into provincial politics overnight from Ottawa without a firm grasp of provincial issues. So he had to learn about them on the job, couldn't anticipate criticism of the positions he took and wasn't prepared to defend against it.
So, then, what's Pauline Marois's excuse?
The Parti Québécois leader has been almost constantly involved in provincial politics for most of her adult life, since Jacques Parizeau, then finance minister, hired her as his press attaché 30 years ago.
She was elected to the first of her six terms as a member of the National Assembly in 1981. She has held every major cabinet portfolio in the government except justice, for which she is ineligible because she is not a lawyer. She was a candidate for the leadership of the PQ three times, first running in 1985.
So if there's anyone who should know what she stands for by now, it's Marois.
Yet her 7-month-old leadership has been characterized by uncertainty, confusion, contradictions and retreats on policy questions.
The latest example is her fumbling of the question of whether the restrictions on admission to publicly funded English primary and secondary schools should be extended to the pre-school level.
On Sunday, the Canadian Press news agency reported that some PQ MNAs, including culture critic Pierre Curzi, were in favour of that idea. The story was picked up by major Quebec news sites on the web, saying the PQ wanted to extend Bill 101 "to the cradle."
Fearing ridicule, and perhaps a negative reaction among francophone parents who send their children to English-language daycare, the PQ hastily tried to distance itself from the MNAs' comments without causing them to lose face. A few hours after the story was published, the PQ released a statement saying that the idea hadn't been raised in the party.
And the next day, Marois disavowed the MNAs - sort of - by saying the PQ had "no intention" of considering the question of the language of daycare "for the time being."
Yet the MNAs had merely responded to a recent cue from their leader herself. Perhaps carried away by the PQ's success at exploiting the language issue, Marois had said in an interview only last week that extending Bill 101 to daycare "is something we should be able to discuss and raise."
Another, memorable example of Marois's contradicting herself occurred last November. In quick succession she said a Marois government would raise the provincial sales tax by one point, then said she wouldn't, while criticizing the Charest government for not doing it.
She recently said a PQ government would commit "acts of sovereignty" even before holding a referendum, after previously saying she would de-emphasize sovereignty.
She has proposed a citizenship bill including a ban on newcomers running for provincial office if they can't speak French, then appeared to waver in the face of criticism of the ban. She has let it be known she was prepared to drop the ban, but has not actually done so. She recommended the bill to the Bouchard-Taylor commission on accommodations, but without mentioning the ban. And she seems unable to articulate clearly who is included in her definition of the Quebec "us."
Marois's political career has not only survived many changes in leadership and prevailing ideology in the PQ, but has thrived through most of them. But maybe she has trimmed her sails so often in response to shifts in the prevailing winds in the party over such a long period of time that she can no longer be truly said to have any principles of her own.
Or maybe it is simply that Marois is proving to be the latest example of a leader more suited to being a follower.
dmacpher@thegazette.canwest.com