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If she thought the 2004 federal Liberal election campaign looked like the Keystone Cops, what does Carolyn Parrish think of this year's model?
"I'm delighted I'm not running. This one is 10 times worse. I've never seen such ineptitude," said Parrish, who's winding down her spectacularly controversial 13-year career as an MP.
Parrish's unsympathetic description during the 2004 campaign of the deficiencies of Liberal strategy, which referenced the antics of the famous Hollywood creation of Canadian filmmaker Mack Sennett, the Keystone Cops, left some in her own party aghast.
It confirmed her image among her peers as the MP most likely to circle the wagons, and shoot inward.
And, eventually, coupled with a little Bush-league voodoo and a few too many verbal broadsides at the boss, it got the former school board chair kicked right out of the caucus.
The thing about Parrish in that case, and in a lot of others, is that, although her comments were brash and ill-timed, they also bore a striking resemblance to the truth.
As she sits poised on the exit ramp of federal politics, Parrish has a unique (some might say biased) view of this campaign.
She's neither the first nor the last to think that Paul Martin has so many advisors, he doesn't know what to do. Too many people have his ear, he can't make up his mind who to listen to and he's indecisive as a result, Parrish contends.
His advisors made the mistake of spending the first half of last year's campaign distancing themselves from Jean Chretien. It was the switch to pounding the Liberals' own solid fiscal record, and not the attack ads aimed at Stephen Harper, that turned that campaign, according to the first-ever Mississauga-Erindale MP.
"Harper has run a textbook campaign this time and he's kept the lunatic fringe under control," said the would-be Ward 6 candidate in this fall's municipal election. "Last time, he had a couple of really bad meltdowns."
People forget that there were still open wounds in the last Conservative campaign after the shotgun marriage of the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance.
More Parrish the thoughts on the current campaign:
"A Tory minority would be a wonderful thing because it would allow the Liberal Party to renew itself. The Party has been waging an internal war for 11 years now. It's time to clean that up. It was supposed to get better when Martin won, but it got worse."
The real Stephen Harper would be a scary thing to see.
"I still believe he's a Reformer, not a Tory."
The Conservatives have a momentum that may be unstoppable.
"It's like a snowball going downhill that's getting larger and larger. I think this campaign's lost for the Liberals."
Despite a slow start to his campaign, she predicts Omar Alghabra will win.
"I can't imagine Omar blowing a 12,000-vote lead (her margin in '04.)
Paul Szabo will survive in Mississauga South but Wajid Khan is in trouble.
Finally, "if the Liberals only have five seats left in Canada, one of them will belong to Albina (Guarnieri)."
Parrish will be part of the post-electoral campaign analysis on a panel with Buzz Hargrove and Deb Grey the morning after the election on CBC's The Current.