Conservative Leader Stephen Harper must now know what it feels like to work hard just to stand still.

There is general agreement Harper looks a lot better on television in this campaign than in the last federal election. In fact he is beginning to look like he is enjoying himself. The visuals he used for the announcement that the Conservatives would reduce the GST were clever.

In addition, the Conservatives surprised most of us by making the first leg of the race an issues campaign, after spending the last year and a half slinging nothing but mud at the Liberals.

Still, that Liberal lead stays frozen in the polls by as much as eight points, according to all but one major pollster.

Maybe it is because, as pollster Nik Nanos points out, Harper can’t expect to wear turtle necks and kiss a couple of babies and expect the polls to change. Still, since this is such a long campaign, there may be time for Harper’s new image to sink into the body politic.

Keith Davey, the great Liberal rainmaker, once said the Liberals will always lose an election when the Conservatives manage to shift to their left. Harper appears to be doing just that by promising to cut the GST (one-time NDP policy) or to subsidize your kids’ sports activities.

Cutting the GST may be dubious economic policy, but there is no doubt it is a popular notion with the public. Still, the Conservatives don’t appear to have received much of a bounce in the polls, particularly in the all-important 905 belt in Ontario.

Maybe this is because the public has learned not to get excited about election promises, particularly on the GST.

On the Liberal side, this has not been a good campaign so far for Paul Martin. He looks like a man under siege. The Conservatives have caught the Liberals by surprise several times with their policy announcements. And a senior aide continues to embarrass him.

But it has been a lucky campaign for Martin. First, labour leader Buzz Hargrove gave Martin a virtual endorsement after a tiff with NDP Leader Jack Layton. Then just as Martin was in the embarrassing position of having to explain away the stupid remark of Scott Reid about beer and popcorn along comes U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins to poke his imperialist nose in Canada’s election.

It was clear at the beginning of the campaign that Martin was planning to use the old Canadian political standby of campaigning against the Americans. But Wilkins’ remarks and veiled threat have legitimized that strategy, just as intemperate remarks by Randy White in the last election legitimized Liberal fear tactics.

Meanwhile, the NDP, despite the charisma of Layton, appears to be losing support to both the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Usually in an election campaign, governments tend to fall in the polls. It will be interesting to see if this aberration holds once the mud starts to fly in the second leg of the campaign.