The public opinion polls are looking up, the prime minister’s personal brand almost has caught up with that of his chief rival and the economy appears to be on the mend, despite falling oil prices.

The ruling Conservatives did well in two November byelections, and the Liberals and New Democratic Party are pointing fingers at each other in a scandal over allegations of sexual misconduct. Things couldn’t go much better for the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

But, right on cue, the Conservative self-destruction gene seems to be kicking in.

A case in point is the way the government handled a critical report from the Office of the Auditor General (AG) on the way Veterans Affairs Canada deals with disability claims by veterans suffering from mental health problems. This issue will be a case study of what not to do in dealing with political crisis for many years.

The government sees reports by the AG in advance of their release to the public, and took advantage of this insider knowledge to try to neutralize a highly critical report on Veterans Affairs. The Conservatives made a surprise announcement on a Sunday morning that the government would spend an additional $200 million over six years on veterans with mental health problems.

That’s a standard crisis-management technique to get out in front of an issue. The aim was to steal attention from the AG’s report when it was released publicly the following Tuesday.

As things turned out, the government’s strategy had the opposite effect. Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s criticism of the way veterans’ mental health files are handled was so severe and damning, the $200-million announcement seemingly had no effect.

If anything, the move prompted speculation that the government is so frightened by criticism of the way it treats veterans, it resorted to $200 million in impromptu spending in a desperate bid to deflect attention.

Then, we find out that $200 million wouldn’t be spent over six years, despite the explicit wording of the government’s press release; the funds would be spent over 50 years.

Hold on, there’s more.

On the day Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino would have had to face the music raised by the release of the critical report, he was in Italy commemorating a Second World War battle. We know this was a sudden decision because the minister was supposed to speak at a conference in Canada that day.

To top off the government’s ordeal, news has leaked out that Veterans Affairs had to return $1.5 billion to the treasury because the money was unused – even though the ministry closed nine veterans’ services centres across the country and laid off hundreds of employees.

The prime minister has been under intense pressure to fire Fantino after what should have been a good November.

Something’s wrong here – and it goes beyond policies, bad luck or whomever is on the front benches. It is something that plagues governments in general everywhere: government by 27-year-olds. If sometimes the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) seems like it is not operating under adult supervision, that is because the PMO often isn’t.

Because of the transitory, unpredictable nature of work as ministerial aides or party operatives, it is difficult to recruit people with stable careers and mortgages. Most political aides are kids who are looking to buff up their resumés.

For the most part, these young operatives and apparatchiks are earnest, idealistic and dedicated enough to work long hours. But like young people everywhere, they are impressionable.

When a government shrugs off violations of the Canada Elections Act, which it did when the Conservative Party pleaded guilty to violating advertising expense limits, or when a former campaign worker goes to jail for vote suppression, some of those young aides will think it’s OK to break the rules. Or might think it’s OK to write scenarios in which the chief justice of the Supreme Court is wrongly accused of malfeasance, as happened last summer.

This might explain why so many of the government’s recent moves have a puerile feel to them. And it also might explain why those moves frequently backfire.

There is some truth to the old chestnut: “It is not your enemies who kill you in politics; it’s your friends.”

© 2015 Investment Executive. All rights reserved.