The experts say it will have no legs.

It does, however, have feet.

Just ask Allan Rock, who effectively had the boots put to his leadership ambitions the moment the Auditor-General revealed that the government's gun registry had turned into a billion-dollar fiasco.

Virtually since the Auditor-General's role was created back in 1878, conventional wisdom has had it that the report will be a one-day wonder. There is immediate outrage in Parliament and in the press, but interest fades quickly, and the story that seemed on the verge of bringing down the government early in the week is ancient history by the weekend. The boondoggles just don't last.

"They never do," Patrick Gossage, former press secretary to prime minister Pierre Trudeau told the Ottawa Citizen yesterday. "I think, frankly, we are inured to overruns in government programs.

"Overruns? Well, yawn."

Allan Rock can only pray this is true -- but in this case it does not appear to be so. The damage that has been done is real and lasting. Only a week ago people were saying that the Industry Minister's slim leadership fortunes seemed finally on the rise. Today, with Mr. Rock being blamed as the architect of the gun-registry disaster, with Liberal backbenchers making a most-unusual call for his resignation, he is surely finished.

"He's fallen from 2 per cent in the polls to zero," admits one supporter.

What might just make this particular one-day wonder stretch on and on is the Liberal leadership race, with Rock supporters already scrambling to suggest that those who would draw and quarter the Industry Minister might want to take a good hard look at a former finance minister named Paul Martin. Mr. Martin, after all, was once in charge of those who kept issuing the cheques to pay for this mess. Did they really not notice that costs were soaring out of control beyond the $85-million over five years that Mr. Rock had pledged would be the cost to taxpayers?

If there is a difference this time from all the recent government fiascos that have gone before -- the HRDC mess, the dubious advertising contracts, the questionable grants -- it is that everything that happens from this point on takes place in the context of that leadership race.

And even if it is not considered a contest in any doubt -- Mr. Martin having been declared prime minister-in-waiting so long ago he has already spent his honeymoon -- it is rapidly becoming a race with the potential of going entirely the opposite direction to the norm.

Until now, leadership races have always been regarded as ways in which to raise the profile of the party and excite the population with the prospect of a new face with new ideas. Pierre Trudeau, of course, is the classic instance in Canadian history, but leadership races were also extraordinarily beneficial, even if only in the short term, to the likes of Tory leaders John Diefenbaker, Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark, NDP leader Ed Broadbent and even Jean Chrétien.

Today, the Liberal leadership race seems to do as much damage as good.

The Prime Minister who holds on, Jean Chrétien, is increasingly wearing on both the public and his own caucus. First his own members of Parliament refused to back him on proposed parliamentary reforms; then, this week, an angry Liberal caucus has apparently forced the Prime Minister to back down on any plans to ban political donations from corporations and unions.

The prime minister who waits, Mr. Martin, is beginning to fall under the scrutiny reserved for those leaders already in office. Considering the potential baggage from both his highly successful political and business backgrounds, one cannot help but wonder what media support Paul Martin might provide between now and Nov. 15, 2003, when the party is to choose a new leader -- let alone between that point and Feb., 2004, when Mr. Chrétien says he will officially step down.

The alternatives to Mr. Martin are now, with Mr. Rock's apparent demise, down to a very slim one, John Manley, the Deputy Prime Minister who flip-flopped on the NHL hockey bailouts, who retreated from the bank mergers, who called for an end to the monarchy and then expressed his regret, who. . . .

Should Mr. Manley actually run, will they allow him to backpedal all the way to the finish line?

The party that put equality into the Charter has no woman likely to run . . . No fresh face to offer . . . No evidence of fresh ideas . . . It has a leader who may end up marginalized from his own caucus . . . A leader in waiting who is only beginning to be scrutinized. . . .

The Liberal argument, of course, has long been that there is no other choice, for there is no alternative.

After a week like this, however, even empty seats would be an acceptable alternative.
rmcgregor@globeandmail.ca