"It's the economy, stupid!"

-- Bill Clinton's unofficial 1992 campaign slogan.

The Canadian electorate has considered the options carefully, and on Tuesday we will collectively cast a ballot for none of the above. Minority governments have become the new normal in our national politics because no party has earned the trust of anywhere near a majority of voters.

The turning point in this campaign was Stephen Harper's disastrous foray into the culture wars at a time when we were preoccupied with more serious matters. Gratuitous attacks on artists and promising to lock up 14-year-old criminals for life may have worked as wedge issues in better economic circumstances. But the volatility of world financial markets has exhausted voters' patience with such transparent attempts to divide and distract us.

As prime minister, Harper failed to create an emotional connection with much of the country, particularly women and urbanites. That inability to feel our pain didn't matter much in those simpler times, because compared to mediocre opponents, Harper was calm and competent. It was only when markets turned upside down that Harper's aloof detachment became a real liability with voters now genuinely frightened by the future.

Harper, who entered the campaign with a good shot at winning a majority government, is hardly the only loser in this debacle. Stephane Dion will claim a moral victory only because his party wasn't wiped from the face of the political map. But the Liberal operation was an amateur hour throughout; starting with its embarrassing failure to locate a campaign plane for days after the writ was dropped.

It took Dion a full three weeks to abandon his complicated "Green Shift" as the Liberal campaign centrepiece. Dion's inability to sell a fundamentally sound policy just delays the inevitability of a carbon tax in Canada that taxes what we burn as opposed to what we earn. Only when the Liberals started focusing on their (Paul Martin's) recent record as deficit fighters did they stop their descent in the polls and salvage some of their base.

The NDP's Jack Layton ran by far the best campaign of the bunch. Layton showed unprecedented discipline in an attempt to calm voters' fears about NDP fiscal policies, even disavowing deficit spending as a response to the financial crisis. But the Internet indiscretions of several of his candidates undermined Layton's claim that the NDP was ready to govern.

Layton's used car salesman shtick still lacks the authenticity of an Ed Broadbent or Tommy Douglas. As a result, the NDP missed an historic opportunity to consolidate so-called "progressive voters" and become Canada's official opposition.

The Green Party campaign peaked with the grassroots clamour to include Elizabeth May in the leaders' debates. And while May performed adequately in debate and her party offers some interesting policy innovations, economic uncertainty will likely dissuade voters from taking a chance on an untested party. The Greens will eventually elect members to Parliament, just not this time.

The campaign's silver lining is that it may inspire a change in the tenor and substance of the political culture in Ottawa. Posturing and partisanship by all parties in recent years has undermined our trust in Parliament.

The challenges we now face require a new level of seriousness and civility in our political discourse. The future will demand unprecedented courage and sacrifice from our leaders and by all Canadians.

Those politicians incapable of adapting to this new reality will not survive.

Terry Cooke is a former Hamilton-Wentworth regional chair. terry_cooke@sympatico.ca