Maclean's columnist Paul Wells rebuts some of Stephen Harper's pronouncements about the media dogs who, in the PM's mind, nip harder at the heels of Conservative prime ministers than Liberal ones.

Some excerpts:

"Man with a plan" is the headline over Stephen Harper's cover interview in the August Reader's Digest. The subhead informs us that "The Prime Minister is fearless, committed -- and having the time of his life." The Prime Minister tells the magazine he gets a rough ride from reporters: "It's a historic fact" that tension between journalists and the government "is always heightened when it's a Conservative government."

You can see his point. Reader's Digest, for instance,pummels the guy. The headline could have described Harper as "Fearless, committed, studly, agile, a man who combines a genius IQ with the common touch." But it doesn't. Bunch of Communists. Not that he cares. ...

At home, Harper pronounces himself beset by demons in fedoras with press cards jammed into the hatbands. In interviews with congenial journalists -- the editor of Reader's Digest used to sing Harper's praises in the Calgary Herald -- Harper explains that the world is unfair to him, demonstrating a shaky grasp of Canadian history along the way. "It's a historical fact that tension is always heightened when it's a Conservative government"? Uh, no. Adversarial journalism in Canada began with the Pipeline Debate in 1956, under a Liberal prime minister. Tension heightened considerably under the Liberal governments of Trudeau and Turner. As for Brian Mulroney, the scribes in the gallery were kitty-cats compared to members of Mulroney's own party, who rebelled and ran candidates against him. Odd that Harper would forget.

Harper doesn't like leaks to reporters. He tells Reader's Digest that "before 1993 -- not just the Conservatives, every government before 1993 -- nobody knew what was said in cabinet or caucus." This is fantasy. Mulroney's aide Pat MacAdam told Peter C. Newman: "Leaks were coming right out of the caucus -- the goddamn place is like a sieve." Trudeau's cabinet leaked so badly the Ottawa Citizen ran a cartoon showing a reporter with a fake moustache sitting at the cabinet table. Preston Manning's autobiography is, in large part, a chronicle of Harper's leaks to reporters to undermine Manning. Odd that he'd forget.

Conservatism opens itself to ridicule when it becomes false nostalgia in pursuit of a world that never existed. A prime minister exposes himself to trouble when he treats every file the way Zinedine Zidane treated one opponent. One project for a prime minister's summer: sit in the quiet corner and count to 10.