Clean, decent campaign my aunt Fanny!

Well, the gloves are off in this election campaign and it’s barely more than a week old.

So much for the Prime Minister saying at the outset there will be no attack ads or mudslinging. At least he was right; no mudslinging, but it seems his party’s not above dishing a little puffin poop on Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

That’s what ran on the notaleader.com link on the Conservative Party’s website until some genius decided it was in bad taste and way out of line in terms of personal attack.

Stephen Harper had to apologize publicly and the entire – ahem – mess detracted so significantly from his diesel tax rebate proposal it’s a wonder anyone picked up on the announcement.

I went to the Conservative Party website to see just how vicious the attacks are and clicked on the notaleader link. Sure enough, there’s - dare I say it? - a crapload of completely negative information devoted entirely to slamming Dion and, by association, the Liberal Party. You can click on 14 different links at the site and none of them are complimentary to the Liberal leader. So much for the PM’s ambitious and obviously spurious statement about attack ads and running a decent campaign.

The Liberals have a much tamer website, although their media machine hasn’t shied away from character assassination. Press releases provide on a daily basis the Conservative Broken Promise of the Day, with the insinuation the PM and the government has been less than honest with the Canadian people and we shouldn’t trust Mr. Harper to lead the nation.

The Liberals issue so-called Reality Checks dissecting Conservative policy and have created Scandalpedia, a website with the tagline, ‘the free encyclopedia of Conservative scandals.’

I didn’t go any further because I’ll be honest; this stuff ticks me off. It’s like kids in a playground sniping at one another. Back and forth, back and forth, each refusing to listen to the other, any reasonable discourse drowned in the din of one kid trying to top the other through volume rather than content.

Maybe that’s why Harper said Parliament was dysfunctional. Too much static, too little clarity. But here’s the funny thing; if, as Prime Minister, he’s supposed to be the guiding light and voice of reason to mediate and resolve these conflicts, can we assume then he just didn’t get the job done?

In fact, he pulled the plug because he didn’t think it was working - at least to his advantage - took his ball and went home.

Bottom line? We need a grown-up to step in and set things right because even children are taught that nonsense like this is intolerable. Attack ads and character assassination do little to define the issues for the voting public. They are essentially a distraction that occludes what’s important and it’s clear that’s exactly what this bunch wants.

It seems Harper and Dion have little interest in good governance and a vested interest in turning this thing into a popularity contest with the last man standing. Ridiculous!

I hope voters aren’t sucked in by it. The electorate should deny those who sling mud because all that static is, to my mind, a blatant attempt to divert our attention from the issues and reduce this campaign to a he said/he said scenario. Unacceptable, especially when pundits are calling this one of the most important and definitive elections in our nation’s history.