There's probably some ancient military theorist — Musashi or Sun Tzu or somebody — who warned that you reveal yourself when you attack.  And so Canada's New Government^TM did today when they released  Tories' Latest Attack Ads. ^TM

Don't worry, this isn't a prissy rant about how illegitimate attack ads are. Attack ads are (a) legitimate (b) fun (c) not likely to bamboozle a modern TV audience, which will take into account the sponsor and modify its perceptions of both the target and the sponsor.

But the new French-language ads, unveiled today by Maxime Bernier (no link because I don't feel like it), tell us almost as much about where the Conservatives' heads are at as they do about Stéphane Dion. To wit:

• They were unveiled by Maxime Bernier. Clearly there is still a lingering suspicion that if the Tories wheel Lawrence Cannon out anytime soon, and one of us asks him who gets to be part of the Quebec nation, steam will start jetting out Cannon's ears as though he was the computer on Star Trek when Kirk asked it to compute pi.   

• The ads link Dion to Chrétien, who got 44% of the popular vote in 2000, and not to Martin, who got 33% in 2006. One presumes the Conservatives have polled on this — but I'm not sure that presumption is accurate. I think the choice of Chrétien as bogey man may simply represent a concession to old-time Blue Tory instincts in Quebec. Instincts that have pretty spectacularly proven a poor predictor of voter behaviour over the years. When i see an attack ad based on Chrétien and Dion, I think: the Liberals' best two years in Quebec in the past 15 were the ones when that old bleu, Lucien Bouchard, was fuming about Chrétien and Dion.

• What the ads don't do is link Dion specifically, personally, to the sponsorship scandal. This keeps them outside the purview of the libel laws. They are also, to my mind, fair enough: He really does never stop pining for the old days — that's one of the things he seriously has to fix, and soon; the six or eight budgets Paul Martin introduced in 2005 were not the public-policy beacons of anyone's century except, apparently, Dion's — and part of the old days  was an unacceptable tolerance for corruption. It's a stretch, but what in politics is not a stretch?

• There's something else the ads don't do, and I believe they represent the dog that didn't bark in this whole affair. They batter on and on about the fiscal imbalance and, at one surreal point, even warn that a return to the Liberals will represent a return to "pollution."

But they don't say a single word about the Clarity Act.

In passing, this also helps explain why the ads weren't rolled out by Micahel Fortier, who rushed on Dec. 3 to pin the Clarity Act on Dion (as though it were the worst thing that could be said about him) and who has publicly called the patriation of Canada's constitution "le gâchis de 1982." Here, I am persuaded, we see the hand of the Prime Minister. Nobody badmouths the Clarity Act. Nobody goes after Dion for being mean to Quebec separatists qua separatists.

Because that stuff is popular outside Quebec. And if André Boisclair manages to win the imminent Quebec election campaign, all of it will be part of the necessary armament of any serious Canadian prime minister for the battle that will follow.