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Can Nigel Wright protect Stephen Harper from himself?

Being in the room with the smartest guy can be easy or hard. It’s easy for sycophantic nodders, hard for independent naysayers.

Being in the room with the smartest guy can be easy or hard. It’s easy for sycophantic nodders, hard for independent naysayers.

Nigel Wright, Stephen Harper’s latest choice as chief of staff, has hard days ahead. Whatever else he achieves here, the Onex executive can succeed only by protecting a cocksure Prime Minister from himself.

Harper’s record is remarkably repetitive. Steady climbs toward the majority he craves are interrupted by banana-peel pratfalls.

In the closing days of the 2006 campaign, the Conservative leader lost momentum by musing darkly about closet Liberals in powerful places.

In 2008, running against the most vulnerable Liberal leader in memory, the Prime Minister sabotaged his own cause, first with a reckless lunge at arts funding that alienated, among others, Quebec voters shifting in his direction and then by advising Canadians to invest in crashing markets.

Between those bookends are other chapters: twice proroguing Parliament — once to save his government from defeat and once to silence questions about Afghan prisoner abuse.

A similar glimpse came this summer when Tony Clement, the industry minister largely blamed for turning the G8 and G20 summits into a spending orgy, attacked the long-form census, driving off supporters who understand its vital importance to knowledge-based decision making

Other memorable moments are sprinkled through what’s fast becoming the Harper era.

There was the Prime Minister’s dogged refusal to recognize the dangers facing civilians during Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, an error that eventually forced the damage-control rescue of Canadians living in Lebanon. On the lighter side, there was his gone-in-60-seconds attempt to rewrite the words of O Canada.

It’s not that Harper is less than shrewd or more accident-prone than predecessors. All prime ministers make mistakes and every government stumbles over policy.

Even so, this Prime Minister and this government stand apart. Since coming to power Harper has essentially been the government.

Reasons range from inexperienced ministers to the inherent instability of minority administrations; the reality remains the same. For better and worse, the show here has been a one-man band.

In one way Harper’s dominance need not change with Wright’s arrival. Whatever his weaknesses, Harper remains his party’s greatest strength.

In another way the status quo should not survive Guy Giorno’s departure. Top advisers don’t serve prime ministers well by reinforcing self-destructive reflexes.

It’s cynically said that any political career that doesn’t end in death ends in failure. Leaders who make the most of the fleeting time between campaign victories and those gloomy alternatives are wise enough to accept that they aren’t always right and must lean heavily on strong counsel.

Jean Chrétien, who knew from experience almost everything to know about politics, relied on Jean Pelletier. Brian Mulroney was at the top of his game when Derek Burney was coaching.

By all accounts, Wright is cut from similar moulds. Whip smart and disciplined, he is expected to bring strategic and tactical order back to a prime minister’s office now bouncing off the ideological and political guardrails.

A story Wright, an avid runner, is said to tell about himself — and friends are now telling about him — involves him once finding himself surrounded by snarling dogs.

While it might seem a metaphorical forecast of what lies ahead — the comparison to Ottawa is obvious — it’s also imperfect. His challenge here is not to see off the pack, it’s to control the lead dog.

James Travers is a national affairs columnist for The Toronto Star.