As the battered conservatives spend this summer wondering what happened to their mojo and how so much political capital could have been squandered in just two years, they might consider rereading Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years.

Fifty years ago, author Peter C. Newman detailed in this book how one man – John Diefenbaker – went from being his party’s biggest asset to its biggest liability, mainly because he couldn’t make the transition from Opposition leader to prime minister.

There aren’t many traits common to Dief and Stephen Harper. But neither man could be described as self-effacing. And both will be remembered as confrontational men with a knack for making enemies and burning bridges inside and outside their own parties. And midway through their majority governments, both received their most serious criticism from within their own parties.

Most important, both men share a reckless streak. Diefenbaker seemed to make the removal of James Coyne as governor of the Bank of Canada as painful as possible and needlessly polarized the country with the way he cancelled the Avro Arrow.

In Harper’s case, the Senate scandal -and it has been fumbled – is only one example of recklessness.

Another case in point is the temporary foreign workers program. A program to address critical labour shortages around the country is easily justifiable. But because the government inserted a clause allowing employers to pay foreign workers 15% less than the going rate, it instantly morphed into a cheap foreign labour scheme.

In other words, a defendable policy decision was foolishly turned into a political liability because of carelessness. This is probably because the command and control culture of this government does not encourage second opinions or words of caution from civil servants or even political aides.

Harper, like Diefenbaker, appears not to trust anyone outside his immediate political tribe. But, unlike Dief, Harper and his government are now being seen by many as being ethically challenged – and deservedly so.

Certainly, the Harper regime is not the first government to be elected on unfulfilled promises of more transparency, accountability and ethics. But over seven years in office, the Harperites have been so pious and self-righteous that they are now being viewed much like a sheriff who was supposed to clean up Dodge City but opened a bordello instead.

Another problem is what the current government stands for – or doesn’t. The Tories have staked their reputation on their record as good economic managers.

But as the formerly friendly Canadian Federation of Taxpayers has pointed out, the federal Conservatives are being remembered as the guys who inherited a $313-billion surplus and turned it into a stubborn deficit within two years of office and increased the federal debt to $516.6 billion from $458 billion in 2008, in the process leaving the previous Liberal regime as the undisputed fiscal conservatives in the modern political era.

Harper’s government is in real danger of being written off as cafeteria conservatives who pick and choose principles and policies as they suit them.

In fairness, Harper has tried harder than any other prime minister to wean the country off dependence on the U.S. economy. But until the government can announce the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement and other key deliverables, the media will dwell on crises and ethical lapses.

The Harperites still own the economy as an issue. But watch for this government to start hedging by taking ownership of health care and other softer “shield issues,” like the environment, as they go into recovery mode.

The prime minister probably knows it is going to take more than a shuffled cabinet and a deft throne speech this autumn to recover his government’s lost political capital.

He is going to need a new agenda that will give Canadians something else to talk about other than the Senate, the ongoing robocall scandal and neverending election-spending violations. The question is whether Harper and his disciples in the PMO can get out of perpetual crisis mode long enough to develop that agenda.

Most of the Harper government’s problems are self-inflicted, not because of a strong Opposition. There are plenty of people on both sides of the House of Commons wondering what would happen in 2015 if the Conservatives had a new leader.

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