So what have been the highlights of this four-week election campaign? Perhaps I have witnessed too many such contests, but for me the magic moments have been few and far between.
Yes, it has been exciting in the sense that the result remains in doubt until the very end. And, yes, the TV debates have injected a wholly new dimension into the battle for power, producing the only really turbo-charged moment - the Clegg surge that put about 8 points on the Lib Dem poll rating.
Despite Gordon's best efforts, gaffes have been a rarity. Of course, "bigotgate" was a spectacular and one likely to haunt Labour all the way to the ballot box because it amounted to an insult to Brown's core vote.
But Clegg and Cameron have hardly put a foot wrong, moving smoothly from photo-call to speech to interview to photo-call again.
Dramas from elections past - like the way Michael Foot was nearly sacked as Leader half way through the 1983 campaign, like Kinnock and Hattersley endlessly contradicting each other over Labour's tax plans in 1987, like Kinnock"s "take to the hills" defence policy against a potential Soviet invasion, like the tax bombshell, like Maggie Thatcher's "I want the doctor I want, on the day I want" rant in 1987, like John Major unleashing the soap box in 1992, like Neil Hamilton and Martin Bell slugging it out on Knutsford Heath in 1997, like the Prescott punch of 2001 - seem more vivid than the more measured and choreographed procession of 2010.
Perhaps the debates were the problem, compressing the power struggle into three 90-minute made for TV episodes. And even then, no debate attracted more than 10 million viewers, less than a quarter of the electorate.
Potentially big issues, such as curbing the deficit and immigration policy, have failed to dominate the campaign in the way many expected. And although TV dominated through the debates, the big setpiece televised interview with a Brown, Cameron or Clegg became a thing of the past.
Personality mattered more than policy in a way I have not seen before, perhaps understandably with all three parties clustered around the centre ground.
On April 7, the YouGov poll for the Sun gave the Conservatives 37 per cent, Labour 32 per cent, the Lib Dems 19 per cent, and Others 12 per cent. Today the same poll scores it Conservatives 35 (down 2 from a month ago), Labour 30 (down 2), the Lib Dems 24 (up 5) and Others 11 (down 1). So, according to the pollsters, besides a Liberal bubble now apparently subsiding a little, not much has changed in a month despite the armies of spin doctors, policy wonks and image makers deployed on all sides.
It has not been a vintage campaign. But, for Tories at least, it could prove a vintage result.
Labour's campaign is now in deep trouble. Labour candidates are openly attacking the Prime Minister, Labour ministers are calling on Lib Dems to vote tactically to keep the Tories out, and the press is bursting with speculation about who might replace Gordon Brown when he loses the election.
These are all signs of political meltdown in Labour ranks. Discipline is collapsing and stoking up fear of a Conservative victory is now the only message emanating from the Brown camp.
Labour is reduced to a core vote strategy, desperately trying to turn out its tribal supporters, many of whom are inclined to stay at home after being roundly insulted by their leader with his catastrophic bigot jibe.
Disarray in Labour ranks will put a spring in David Cameron's step as he embarks upon his marathon 36-hour tour of the country in a final bid to drum up support.
Cameron looks sure of picking up a lot of Labour seats. At the start of the campaign he needed probably about 100 gains from Labour and 20 gains from the Lib Dems to get him over the finishing line.
But after the Clegg surge, those potential gains from the Lib Dems look far less likely, meaning that the Conservatives probably need to make 120 gains from Labour and fight the Lib Dems to a draw, thereby still securing enough seats for an overall majority.
Not that Cameron has given up on winning back Liberal seats. Tomorrow, he will be in the West Country, now an even more vital election battleground, seeking to reverse the Clegg advance and pick up precious extra seats.
But it is worth looking more deeply into Labour's machinations. It may have given up on winning the election, but it has not given up on power. All this talk of a "progressive alliance" by Labour ministers such as Peter Hain is not only intended to encourage anti-Tory tactical voting, it is also intended to lay the ground for a post-election Lib-Lab coalition. Labour is gearing up to argue that since it and the Liberals have polled, say, 55 per cent of the vote, the country has voted for a centre-left pact.
All this has the makings of a shabby deal: Brown quits, Labour cobble together an interim new leader and a deal is done with Clegg with a referendum on various forms of proportional representation as the price. Will it fly? Maybe not, but it does represent a serious threat to the country and the Conservative Party.
So David Cameron is right to take the battle into Lib Dem territory tomorrow such as Torbay and Falmouth. He is literally fighting on the beaches.
Neil Kinnock's hubristic cry of "We're all right!" as he posed as a political rock star before 10,000 swooning supporters at the Sheffield rally has gone down in folklore as the moment Labour lost the 1992 election.
Is David Cameron risking a repeat of that miscalculation with his forecast on the Andrew Marr Show of the steps he would take on his first day in Downing Street after the winning the election?
Early editions of today's Times (later toned down) suggested Cameron faced a "backlash" over his alleged presumptousness. One unnamed Labour aide is quoted as saying he was over-reaching himself in his quest for the crown.
But parallels between Cameron's interview and Kinnock's braggadocio are wide of the mark. Cameron, in far more measured language than the former Labour leader, is rightly trying to focus the electorate's mind on the practical and immediate steps he would take to get the country back on track.
An early casualty of a Cameron premiership would be the long summer holidays enjoyed by MPs - a pledge calculated to tap into the anti-politician mood sweeping the land. But there would also be less symbolic early measures as Prime Minister Cameron rolled up his sleeves and brought forward a Queen's Speech scrapping some of the more intrusive aspects of Labour era, such as ID cards.
And, of course, a new Conservative administration would immediately start to get to grips with controlling runaway public spending.
Cameron was right again to highlight the "muddle and fudge" of a hung Parliament, still the most likely outcome of this three-way fight for power.
The challenge remains over the final few days to bring home to people both the seriousness and urgency of the financial crisis facing the nation and the near impossibility of finding solutions in the fog of a messy electoral draw.
Coupled with that must be the communication of simple, practical reasons for supporting the Conservatives. After a campaign in which the Leaders' Debates have elevated style over substance, clear policy commitments must make a belated comeback.
David Cameron has got momentum. All the opinion polls today point to a widening of the Conservative lead over the other two parties.
But while Cameron is tantalisingly close to the magic figure of 326 seats, present projections still point to a hung Parliament. Cameron's challenge in the final days of the campaign is to consign this prospect, the dark horse of the election, to the knacker's yard.
One ray of light is that the public is beginning to wake up to the perils of an inconclusive result. According to today's ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph, 52 per cent of people believe that a hung Parliament would be bad for Britain; only 24 per cent would welcome the result with another 24 per cent undecided.
Given the scale of the problems facing the country, now would be the worst time for government in the UK to be product of a messy compromise between Labour and the Lib Dems or to be the responsibility of a minority
Conservative administration without the numbers to press ahead with its programme of change.
Painful and unpopular decisions to curb the deficit must be taken immediately; Trident renewal must be given the green light to wipe out any doubt about Britain's determination to defend itself; the planned jobs tax must be scrapped now; a cap on immigration is urgently needed; and the schools revolution cannot come too soon.
But all these urgent and necessary measures would be scuppered or diluted if the election ends in a draw.
The Conservatives have to hammer home the message that a hung Parliament equals weak and inadequate government. It will need vigour and energy to get that message across - and a concerted campaign.
I was in the Central Office war-room on the night of Wednesday May 16th 2001 when John Prescott landed his infamous punch on the mullet-haired egg-thrower.
The instant media reaction was that the Deputy Prime Minister had just floored Tony Blair's re-election bid. But in the cold light of the following day, Labour's campaign was still on track. The public judged that Prescott was much provoked and men of a certain disposition rather admired the quality of his left hook.
William Hague responded eventually (CCO had not reacted overnight) with a joke: "It is not my policy to go around hitting the voters".
To update the jibe, it is presumably not David Cameron's policy to go round apologising to voters in person. Brown, on the other hand, need not stop with Gillian Duffy. Most of the rest of us feel he owes us an apology too.
Brown's bigot blunder looks far more serious. It is unjustifiable and unprovoked. Worse, since immigration is a major concern for most people, it brands well over half the country as bigots.
Initial polling, by YouGov for The Sun, had the Tories up 1 and the Lib Dems up 3 with Labour down 2, suggesting a drop in Labour support with core voters (they haven't got anyone else left) switching to Clegg. Nine per cent of people said they were less likely to vote Labour because of Gordon's blunder; 3 per cent (who are they?) were more likely to back Labour.
All this seems to suggest that Labour's support is heading for the mid-20s while the Libs climb into the low 30s. This is good for the Conservatives because a clear lead over Labour, say around 10 points or more will put many previously safe Labour seats at risk.
David Cameron will feel vindicated today in his cautious election strategy. This was always predicated on the belief that Brown would lose the election - partly because of his manifest policy failures but also because of his brittle and unstable character. Now he has cracked under pressure and it may well prove impossible to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Brown has one last chance - the Leaders' Debate tonight. Bizarrely, the man who wrecked the economy touts himself as the only man who can put things right.
But with Greece imploding and the contagion of market fear spreading through southern Europe, Brown's credentials as our economic saviour look shakier still. Dither and delay have exacerbated Greece's horror show. But Brown and Clegg want to put off action to tackle our ghastly deficit until next year.
Cameron has an opening here: to press his case for action this day.
Just about everyone expected the deficit, the spending cuts and the tax rises needed to get the economy back on track to be the defining feature of this campaign. The great irony is that instead of engaging with the biggest problem facing the country, all three parties have shied away from it.
Now the Institute of Fiscal Studies has brought that omission into sharp relief, calculating the black holes in the parties' spending plans that will have to filled by a combination of tax rises and spending cuts.
It is a fair bet that the independent and authoritative IFS report will play a key role in the leaders' debate on the economy tomorrow night.
How should David Cameron respond? It is far too late for him to produce a shopping list of new tax rises or spending cuts. But he can seek to underline his personal commitment to getting the nation's finances back under control. He needs strong rhetoric to drive home the point that he has the will and the means to stop the UK going the way of Greece.
And, just as "New Politics" Clegg succeeded in lumping together "Old Politics" Brown and Cameron in the first debate, so the Tory leader can distinguish his approach from that of his two rivals.
He needs to drive home the point that only the Conservatives recognise the gravity and urgency of the crisis. Only the Conservatives will make an immediate start on balancing the books, unlike Labour and Lib Dem plans to delay action for another day. They are the mañana parties.
Cameron can couple this attack with a further stark reminder of the dangers of a hung Parliament. A Lib-Lab pact would bring together two parties with conflicting views about how to tackle the deficit but united on one point - a commitment to dithering and delay.
As Churchill would have put it, "they are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift."
Cameron's other task is to pin the blame for the recession squarely on Brown's slumping shoulders. The last Conservative government left the economy in fine fettle. Brown's Labour government has left it as a basket case.
The Tories' Hung Parliament message will only work if it is endlessly repeated until polling day
Will it work? That question will be uppermost in the minds of CCHQ officials in the wake of yesterday's fierce assault on the perils of a hung Parliament mounted by David Cameron and George Osborne.
As I noted at the weekend, Cameron is now running not against Brown and Clegg but against the cosy idea that Britain would be in better hands if the election ended in a draw and the parties had to work together.
For all kinds of reasons, this is nonsense. But it is a public perception that will be hard to shift. That's why the Tory high command was right to go on the front foot yesterday, changing their PEB to target the Hung Parliament Party.
They will have to go on driving the message home all the way to polling day. No message ever gets across unless it is endlessly repeated. Dave should use the Leaders' Debate on Thursday to step up the attack, leveling with the public and pointing out that the painful decisions necessary to restore the nation's finances to health will not be taken by a weak coalition government.
The media will help. Today's Daily Mail contains an excellent piece on how proportional representation has made the government of Italy a byword for corruption and instability. Do we want that in the UK?
It is a time for hard pounding by the Tory leadership. And it will work.
Not so long ago every day in an election campaign began with a morning press conference hosted by a senior figure - usually the party leader.
Not so today. In fact, by my reckoning, it took until today, 20 days after the election was called, for David Cameron to face the media in time-honoured fashion. Cameron was in London at party HQ. Nick Clegg, meanwhile, was in Edinburgh trying to win support for the Lib Dems north of the border.
The contrast was striking. Cameron gave a master class in message discipline, deftly turning every question back onto his main point, that a vote for Clegg was a vote for five more years of Gordon Brown.
Clegg has an endearing, but ultimately amateurish tendency to answer the question, often at great length. He should watch a recording of Cameron's assured and disciplined performance to get a stronger sense of how to stay on message. Cameron should do more of these conferences. He's good at them and it gives him credibility with the media.
Both men were essentially being asked the same question - what would happen in the event of a hung Parliament? Dave's plan for a greener Britain through the innovation of new parks created by local communities was predictably ignored by the press - as was Clegg's renewed assault on the bankers.
Clegg's readiness to think aloud has already sowed some confusion. Apparently, he won't do a deal with Gordon Brown if Labour come second in seats but third in terms of the popular vote. But is is less clear whether he would do a deal with Labour if Mandelson and Co ditched Brown as leader and installed someone more PR-friendly, such as Alan Johnson.
The media was out to get Cameron over whether he would contemplate ditching the first past the post system for some form of PR. He made abundantly clear his distaste for PR but smoothly avoided actually ruling out talking to Clegg post election about changing the voting system.
He was right to do so. First, Cameron is back on his love-bomb the Lib Dems ticket, going on at some length about how green, local and energy efficient is the new-look Tory party. Fine in so far as it goes but the objection remains that the Lib Dem surge has little to do with Lib Dem policy and a lot to do with Clegg posing outrageously as the Mr Clean of a rotten Parliament.
Cameron should beat the drum yet more loudly about the ghastly spectre of a hung Parliament.
Second, no politician worth his salt rules out anything unless he has to. Cameron wants room for manoeuvre in a hung Parliament. This is understandable. But the weight of Tory opinion against PR in any form is so strong that he may have to kill off the prospect completely within the new few days.
Judging from this morning's opinion polls, David Cameron is edging ahead in the race for Downing Street. On ICM, he is up 2 points on 35 and 9 points ahead of a sinking Labour Party. On YouGov, he is again up 2 points on 35 and Labour is down 3 on 27.
But Cameron is no longer running against just Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg. The dark horse in this race - and the one Cameron has to beat to get across the finishing line with a clear majority - is a hung Parliament. That is the real threat to a Conservative government as polling day comes closer.
One ray of light buried in the YouGov poll is that support for a hung Parliament is declining. It was at stratospheric levels of above 50 per cent. Now it is down to 37 per cent.
Most of the country have little idea what a hung or (God forbid) balanced Parliament means. It sounds quite nice: politicians of all parties putting aside petty differences to govern in the interests of the nation. All that cheap point-scoring and name-calling would evaporate in the spirit of national reconciliation.
Of course, that is nonsense. A hung Parliament would mean paralysis at best, chaos at worst.
It would ultimately reinforce the anti-politician mood in the land as all three parties, but especially Labour and the Lib Dems, embarked in a prolonged period of power politics in which both policies and personalities were sacrificed for selfish advantage.
Disappointment would abound. Those who voted for Clegg because they want to scrap Trident or because they like his idea of tax cuts for low earners would find their wishes frustrated as they were dashed on the rock of Labour intransigence.
It would be a magnificent irony if Clegg, the matinee idol of the anti-politician party, were to reinforce public contempt for the political process.
Peter Mandelson, determined to emerge from the train wreck of the Labour campaign as a winner, is already manoeuvring to ditch Brown as the price of cobbling together a coalition with the Lib Dems, with jobs for the orange boys thrown in.
Cameron has a clear imperative over the coming week to drive home the point that in a hung Parliament the country is the loser. Vital decisions about tax and spending would be ducked, the markets would dive, and Britain would strike an even more hesitant pose on the world stage.
Voting for Clegg means voting for Labour. Not poor old battered and bewildered Gordon, but Labour nonetheless. A discredited and exhausted Labour desperately trying to cling to power under a Miliband or an Alan Johnson. Cameron is right. Only the Conservatives represent real change.
David Cameron should take some comfort from last night's debate. He may not have stalled the Clegg bandwagon, but it is no longer breaking the political speed limit.
Cameron, still more mild-mannered Clark Kent than Superman, slipped into the proverbial phone booth more than once and emerged to give both Clegg and Brown a bloody nose. Clegg was effectively slapped down over his pose as Westminster's Mr Clean and Brown was forced to backtrack over his scurrilous, scaremongering leaflets, which in time-honoured Labour fashion seek to terrify the nation's grannies into sticking with the man who wrecked everyone's old age.
Equally encouraging, the press are still gunning for the Lib Dems. Today's papers declared Cameron the winner and we can confidently expect more media scrutiny of Clegg and his party over the coming days.
Newspapers may not have the influence of the 80s and 90s. But it is hard to imagine that a sustained barrage of bad headlines will fail to pull the Lib Dem's poll rating back towards the mid-20s.
Certainly, that is what Cameron needs: Labour and the Lib Dems slugging it out around the mid 20s and the Conservatives north of 35 per cent.
Easy to say. Harder to achieve. What is the best message for the Tories over the next week or so?
The polls all point to a hung Parliament and one in which Labour have just enough seats (even if they come third in the popular vote) to do a deal with the Lib Dems. Yes, vote Clegg get Brown. But as Ken Clarke has been so energetically arguing it is time to move the argument on - a hung Parliament will plunge Britain into economic and political crisis.
At a time when the country is desperately in need of clear, strong decisive government, it will find itself paralysed by endless haggling, rows and horse-trading as Labour and the Liberals agree only the policies of the lowest common denominator.
The pound will be under pressure. Interest rates will rise. Stock markets and house prices will fall. The fragile recovery will be jeopardised. Firms will go bust and jobs will be lost. Living standards will fall. The deficit will loom over us like a permanent cloud of volcanic ash. Public spending will continue to race out of control. Welfare will remain unreformed. Taxes will rise, especially on the hard-working middle classes and the wealth creators. The City will take another hit. Europe will flex its muscles afresh. Troops fighting in the Afghan deserts will lack for leadership and support at home. Our international status as a nuclear power will be called into question. The trumpet will give out an uncertain note as Britain indeed becomes a second class power.
Clegg talks about real change, fundamental change. He is right. All of the above represents fundamental change. Thirteen years of Labour misrule has been bad enough, but you ain't seen nothing yet. So if you want to see your country brought to its knees and your family beggared, vote for the fresh-faced kid on the telly.
David Cameron and his supporters can rescue the country from this nightmare. But they are going to have to tell it as it is - and fast.
Nick Clegg is the volcanic eruption of this campaign, but he is not the full story. To borrow a line from John Prescott, the tectonic plates of our political landscape are shifting fast and tonight, with the second of the Leaders' Debates, further tremors seem inevitable.
Media coverage of the campaign has so far focused on two players - Clegg and Cameron. Clegg's star rose dramatically a week ago and now, inevitably, he is experiencing the full force of scrutiny by Fleet Street's finest.
Six of today's front-pages lead on anti-Clegg stories, ranging from The Sun, which is thoroughly enjoying itself, to the Financial Times.
No one has landed a knockout blow yet - though the Telegraph story about curious funding arrangements raises as many questions as answers. Clegg promises full disclosure "in a few days". Perhaps he wants to wait until May 7. The press will not be prepared to wait more than a few hours.
But it is Labour that is in the greatest peril. The pollsters are routinely consigning the governing party to third place and a rating in the mid to high 20s. And the Labour campaign has apparently ground to a halt.
David Cameron began by talking about the "Great Ignored". Right now the "Great Ignored" looks like Gordon Brown, woundingly likened to King Lear by Steve Richards in the Independent today.
This is Lear's most famous line, but it could have come from the mouth of the Prime Minister as he contemplates his ever dwindling authority.
"I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall -- I will do such things -- What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be The terrors of the earth!"
Labour cannot afford to drop any further behind the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. While Cleggmania may ensure that the Tory-Liberal fight ends in a draw with neither party making inroads against the other, Labour is teetering on the precipice.
If it loses any more support and drops below 25%, it will find that in previously safe seats the Lib Dem surge will allow Tory candidates to come through the middle and grab unlikely victories.
Cameron's twin goals tonight are to halt the Lib Dem bandwagon and ensure that Labour continues down its path towards oblivion.
He will need to be sharper, crisper, more assertive and more memorable than last week. He will be on the back foot over Iraq and under some pressure over Afghanistan. There he needs to acknowledge genuine differences of opinion over the two wars while sticking to his guns. Taking out Saddam Hussein was right then and is right now. Ditto the Taliban. What he must not do is try to split the difference.
But Europe and Trident offer an opportunity for Cameron to show he has a clear and compelling vision of Britain's unique role in the uncertain world of the 21st Century.
Clegg appears to be ready to let Iran have nuclear weapons but not Britain. Even worse, he subscribes to a mushy internationalism in which the summit of his ambition is for the land of Nelson and Churchill to become a bigger Belgium.
As for Gordon, his threats look increasingly empty.
Crack teams of halo removal operatives are now being scrambled from the murkier quarters of what was once Fleet Street in a last ditch bid to halt the Lib Dem bandwagon.
Today, The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and, of course, ConservativeHome with its attack vid, all waded into St Nick over his expenses claims, his past work as a lobbyist and his leaked leader's debate crib sheet.
His expenses (£83,824 over four years including thousands on mortgage interest and bijou touches such as £160 a month for a gardener to prune his plum trees and a new wall for the rose garden) were first raised at a press conference by that curmudgeonly old warhouse Andrew Neil.
They produced a novel response from Clegg, who were insisted they were acceptable since his "modest" semi in Sheffield belonged not to him but the people and any profit on it would be returned to the taxpayer. Presumably Clegg Towers will opened to a grateful nation and will come complete with a blue plaque, uniformed attendants, and audio guides. By then, according to this fantasy, St Nick will be returfing the Downing Street lawns. (The rose garden already has a wall).
The press are unlikely to stop with expenses claims. After his boast that he has slept with 'no more than 30' women, no doubt the News of the World and the Mail on Sunday, among others, are conducting further inquiries. How many of them are still voting Lib Dem?
David Cameron and his senior lieutenants are staying above the fray. But here can be no doubt that the media's bid to knock a few chips off the Clegg halo is critical to demolishing his claim to be the champion of a new kind of politics, untarnished by the shady pasts of Labour and the Conservatives.
Meanwhile, the polls look ever more volatile. Could we be in for a re-run of 1992 when the pollsters were left with egg on their faces and John Major scored a shock victory?
Certainly, this is looking like a tough election to poll. Evidence is emerging that the Lib Dem surge is predominantly among young, undecided voters glavanised by a combination of a thirst for revenge over claims for pruning plum trees and Clegg's winning smile in last week's X Factor-style debate.
These people show up in the polls. But how likely are they to vote? Not very is the conventional answer. It is grandad and grandma who can be relied upon to make it to the ballot box.
In other words, the polls may be overstating Lib Dem support, suggesting that the Conservatives should be able to repulse a Lib Dem advance in the south and even make a few gains.
Perhaps Labour should be more worried. Grumpy old Gordon has been sidelined by the spectacle of the two young pretenders battling for the crown. For him the risk is a re-run of 1983 where the Centre-Left vote splits almost 50:50 and, with a strong Tory showing, David Cameron comes through the middle to clinch victory.
Cameron has been a lucky leader so far. He just needs his luck to hold for a couple more weeks.
"It feels like 1906 - the Liberals ahead in the polls and not a plane in the sky." In the CCHQ bunker, Tory campaign chiefs can be forgiven some black humour as they grapple with Nick Clegg's runaway bandwagon.
In 1906 the Liberals scored a landslide victory - the last time they won outright in a British general election.
But the boys and girls in the Tory bunker should switch their sights to May 1940. Again there are plenty of parallels. Small boats are heading for France and the natives are proving uncooperative. One poll has suggested Clegg is even more popular than Churchill.
But surely not for much longer. With the campaign seemingly turning on the outcome of three televised Leaders' Debates, Cameron and his aides should be focused on ensuring that Thursday's encounter on Sky marks at least the beginning of a Tory revival.
Incidentally, Sky is making the debate widely available and it is expected to be screened live on BBC News Channel and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Cameron will be channeling nearly all his energies on eclipsing Clegg in the next debate.
First and foremost, he has to puncture Clegg's claim to be the "anti-politician" politician. Either directly - or better through his lieutenants and the press - he has to scotch the Lib Dem's preposterous suggestion that he and his party were in some way untainted by the expenses scandal.
At present, the general election resembles some gigantic by-election with Clegg leader of the "protest party", fanning the crazy notion that the public can take its revenge on the fiddling class at Westminster by voting for Mr Clean. So the Conservatives have to ram home the message that no one - certainly not the Lib Dems - emerges from the moats and duck houses affair with honour.
If they don't, Gordon Brown, the man whose fiddling was of a different order as he trashed the country's finances, will be the ultimate beneficiary of the protest vote.
Of course, the Tories also have to take apart the Lib Dem ragbag of policies. But their main task over the next few days, culminating in the second debate is to knock that halo off Mr Clegg's head.
"It was The Sun wot won it," was the iconic headline after the 1992 election - the last Britain found itself in an election campaign as hazy as the cloud of volcanic ash blotting out most of northern Europe.
Then the nation's most ebullient tabloid took it upon itself to shred the "Welsh windbag" Neil Kinnock and to claim victory for its campaigning techniques after John Major defied the pollsters and a recession and scored an unexpected win.
Nearly 20 years later and The Sun finds itself at the heart of the campaign. It spoiled Gordon Brown's last party conference by declaring for the Conservatives a few after his speech and it since wasted little time boosting David Cameron's prospects.
It is also running the YouGov daily tracker poll - our best guide to the ups and downs of this rollercoaster campaign.
Today, much to its chagrin, The Sun is forced to report that Nick Clegg is out in front, just ahead of the Tories and 7 points up on Labour - a result that would still make Brown leader of the largest party in Parliament and presumably keep him in No 10.
In the absence of any signs of a concerted Tory counter-offensive against the Lib Dems, the press, led by The Sun but also including a so far lukewarm Daily Mail, are hitting back. They are driving home the message that a vote for Clegg will keep Brown as Prime Minister.
Across two pages today, The Sun puts Lib Dem policies to the test of public opinion, finding that of his top 10 plans for the country, six are rejected by voters and only three (tax, public sector pay limits and voting reform) win support.
Anxious candidates fighting Lib Dems might find the poll helpful when it comes to mounting their own fightback on the ground.
But policy is not what is driving the Lib Dem surge. It is Clegg's dubious claim to represent a new kind of politics - to be the voice of a disenchanted public infuriated by the expenses scandal - that is the real motor.
All now seems to turn on the second TV debate on Thursday. The Tory high command has to find a way of demonstrating that Clegg's claims are spurious and that only Cameron can rescue the country from its current malaise.
Last Sunday I observed that the real contest in this election was Cameron versus Clegg. This Sunday, after the oxygen of publicity afforded nice Mr Clegg by the first of the Leaders' Debates, political prediction has become political fact.
One poll - for today's Mail on Sunday - puts the Lib Dems ahead and the others all have them closing fast on the two main parties.
The general election is in danger of becoming some vast by-election in which the Lib Dem bandwagon gathers pace and more people clamber aboard as the belief takes hold that they can actually win.
The biggest obstacle to Lib Dem progress is the widely held perception that voting for them is a wasted vote. But it is harder to argue that point as they and their Leader surge in the polls and growing numbers of the public say that they actively want all this to end in a hung Parliament.
So how does David Cameron stop the orange bandwagon?
First, the Conservatives need to go negative - and fast.
They need to drive home the message that a hung Parliament would be a disaster for a country mired in an economic crisis and desperately in need of a government with the mandate and the courage to take tough decisions on tax and spending.
Second, they need to neutralise Clegg's most beguiling argument - that he and his party represent something new as opposed to the "old politics" of Tory and Labour.
This is a bit rich coming from a party whose salad days coincided with the reign of Queen Victoria. What is new about tracing your political ancestry back to Gladstone and Lloyd George?
Clegg is not really Leader of the Lib Dems. He is Leader of the None of the Above Party, tapping into the sense of disgust and betrayal felt by many people about politicians in general after the expenses scandal.
But Clegg and his party are not untouched by financial chicanery, as Harry Phibbs so effectively pointed out on this site on Saturday. Clegg's hypocrisy over expenses needs to be exposed.
Third, the Conservatives must bring home to the public the left-wing nature of Lib Dem policy. They are soft on crime and immigration,in favour of the euro and all things European, instinctive tax raisers and spenders, weak on defence and generally bossy and bureaucratic.
Fourth, as the polls all too readily confirm, the grin on Gordon's face is getting bigger as the Lib Dem surge promises to keep him in Downing Street for another five years.
How to do it? This time David Cameron should take a back seat. He should stick to his message of optimism and change and fire up some attack dogs to take the fight to Lib Dems.
William Hague and Kenneth Clarke, both well known and well liked by the public, should be let loose on the airwaves and the press to make all four points.
Clarke has already warned about the economic perils of a hung Parliament and the grim prospect of tumbling markets and a plummeting pound.
Hague can do the beards, sandals and Lloyd George knew Nick Clegg's grandfather jokes. He can also savage the incoherence and worse of Lib Dem policy. And he can ridicule St Nick's hypocrisy over expenses and his lust for all things European.
Meanwhile, CCHQ should be helping its media friends put Clegg under the spotlight.
Dave, meanwhile, should stay positive. The Tory manifesto message about the Big Society not the Big State appears to have vanished from view. Cameron needs to make more noise about his vision for repairing our social fabric and the damage done to millions of lives by Labour's Broken Society, so ably charted by Iain Duncan Smith.
This Thursday sees the second of the Leaders Debates and one that Cameron must win clearly to stand any chance of forming a government. Clarke and Hague should play John the Baptist for him, laying the ground for a Cameron counter-offensive against Clegg's self-styled rebel leader pose.
With Iraq and Afghanistan on the agenda it won't be easy. Clegg will again point the finger at Cameron and Brown, seeking to project onto them public disquiet about the sufferings of our troops in seemingly pointless wars far from home.
Cameron will have to be tougher, pointing out to Clegg that running a government is not like running a Lib Dem policy workshop. Difficult and unpopular decisions have to be taken in the wider national interest and seen through to a conclusion.
The Lib Dem bubble may yet burst. By next weekend we will have a better sense of whether the Clegg surge is a blip or a reality. But right now Gordon really does have something to smile about.
By Nick Wood, Managing Director, Media Intelligence Partners Ltd
"I agree with Nick" turned out to be Gordon Brown's mantra last night in the Leaders' Debates. Rather than carpet bomb us with statistics, Gordon love bombed nice Mr Clegg seven times by saying they were in agreement on a string of matters ranging from immigration to Lords reform.
And - to judge from the instant polling - so did much of the country.
Cameron is now in a three-way fight, with his rivals all too ready to join forces to push him to the sidelines. No surprise there. If anything, the Liberals are to the Left of Labour. Vote Clegg, get Brown has never been more true. And never has a Lib Dem leader woken up to headlines as good as this morning.
So how should CCHQ respond?
The current strategy is to add Conservative voices to the "I agree with Nick" chorus. The idea is that by cuddling up to the Lib Dems, the Tories can reassure their softer supporters that it is safe to switch to the blue corner.
But is this really credible now that Clegg is on the brink of hitting 25 pc in the polls and thereby denying significant Tory gains from the Liberals in the south and west of England?
After all, among the top 100 marginal seats, 24 are Lib Dem held. Cameron needs to take all those seats to be in with a chance of an overall victory. Right now that does not seem very likely.
Of course, a Lib Dem surge could threaten Labour in the north. But Brown will calculate that a few losses is a price worth paying to keep the Tories at bay in the south.
Time for a change of strategy. Not so much love bombing as a few surgical strikes.
The overall message should be that by voting for Clegg you are voting for five more years of Gordon Brown. "I agree with Nick" should be plastered across every billboard in the land along with a picture of the Lib-Lab twins.
But CCHQ has got to fire some missiles at the main pillars of Lib Dem policy.
It could start by pointing out that that nice Mr Clegg plans a £17 billion tax raid on the middle classes to fund his tax cut for low earners. Do the gravel drive brigade know that? And do they want to see their personal tax bills spiral?
And then it could move on to entertain the nation by highlighting the myriad confusions and contradictions across the Lib Dem policy smorgasbord.
It might also be worth reminding the public that Clegg is a eurofanatic who is soft on immigration and would have us bailing out the Greeks in a jiffy.
The Liberals need to discover that with novelty comes curiosity and with curiosity comes scrutiny, as Michael Gove has said.
As one senior Lib Dem adviser put it to me this morning, Cameron did not seem to have a game plan to deal with Clegg last night. Come round two next Thursday that will have to change. Otherwise the Lib-Lab love affair could become a more permanent arrangement.
By Nick Wood, Managing Director, Media Intelligence Partners Ltd
Authenticity, passion, incisiveness, grit - and above all humour. These are the qualities David Cameron has to display tonight in the first of the Leaders' Debates.
Cameron goes into the debate in the unenviable position of being the front-runner. Or to put it another way, he has most to lose.
The spin-doctors have been hard at work massaging expectations. Dave, comfortable in the role of being his own spin-doctor, has divulged that he is "nervous" at the prospect of the contest.
Labour's black ops brigade have told The Times the hilarious news that Gordon is struggling in training, giving long-winded answers overflowing with reams of statistics.
Mr Clegg, who has the greatest opportunity tonight to make new friends in Middle England, appears the most relaxed of the trio. His final pre-match warm-up will consist of a long walk in the Pennines. His seconds will be hoping that he gets back in time and doesn't disappear in a cloud of volcanic ash, presumably Iceland's revenge for Britain pulling the plug on its banking system.
Cameron has already made the most memorable contribution to the campaign. His Big Society versus Big State manifesto will be remembered - for good or ill - long after the dust has settled on the election.
Its boldness is impressive, but the doubt remains that like many a Hilton/Letwin confection it has gone over the heads of much of the country. As Ken Clarke might put it, does it pass the "wet Wednesday in Walsall" test? It might win intrigue university professors but will it mean much to voters in the Midlands worried about the familiar staples of taxes, health care and immigration (so far virtually unmentioned in the Conservative campaign)?
Politics abhors a vacuum. In the absence of a full-scale row about sorting out the deficit, which has so far only engaged the Lib Dems, personality may come to define and determine this election.
Expectations of that misfiring adding machine Mr Brown are so low that all he has to do is smile at the right time for the Labour spin machine to declare him the winner. Provided Campbell, Mandelson and Co can reprogramme him as a human being for the night, Gordon may even get off the canvas.
Cameron, the star of unscripted, impromptu communication, has a higher hurdle to jump. His verbal dexterity and fluency is exceptional but he must not come across as slick and superficial - which will be how Brown will try to paint him. Gordon's "no time for a novice", his best line as PM, will never be far from his mind.
Cameron needs to show some grit, some rough edges, just like his "Fire up the Quattro" alter ego DCI Gene Hunt. He has to convey some genuine anger at the state of the country, brought low economically, socially and politically by Labour's spectacular mismanagement of our affairs. And he needs a joke or two about poor clunky Gordon.
As for Clegg, roaming the moors in search of a soundbite, he is the guy with lucky break. It is like Federer and Nadal making the Wimbledon final and then inviting one of the beaten quarter-finalists to join them on Centre Court.
It will be tough for Cameron playing against two conventional leftists. If he comes out on top he will have taken another significant step to Downing Street.
The Mail remains lukewarm in its support of the Conservatives but The Times appears ready to endorse Cameron
David Cameron will be pleased with the press coverage of yesterday's manifesto launch.
He is widely credited with bringing a lack-lustre contest to life and, in the words of The Daily Telegraph, giving us a Big Idea to tussle over.
He has also framed the terms of the debate - Big Society versus Big State - and one that works to his advantage.
To a greater or lesser extent, The Sun, Telegraph, Express, Mail and Times are all on board. Even The Guardian was generous about the Tory pitch.
"The new manifesto is a liberal Tory prospectus from a party which wants to capture the centre ground in an election it believes it can win," said its editorial.
The Times signalled that it will be supporting Cameron come polling day.
“Manifestos are expected to be boring. This one is not. It is thought-provoking, imaginative and intelligent."
"It is worldly, open-minded and peppered with ideas from other countries. It is pragmatic, but it is more than merely a ragbag of policies. In the parlous state of the economy and the public finances, there is an opportunity to unleash entrepreneurial spirit and reshape the State.
"In the Conservative Party there is a group of people making a powerful case that good government can cost less and do more.”
The Mail will worry Cameron though. Outstripped only by The Sun in circulation terms, it is Middle England's favourite paper and one read most widely by women, generally reckoned to hold the key to the outcome of this election. No wonder that three female members of the Shadow Cabinet featured in yesterday's warm-up act for Cameron.
Once again the Mail does not put the Tories on page one. It doesn't even give him a front page picture - unlike the Express. And its leader is lukewarm by tabloid standards.
Family values lie at the heart of the Mail's identity, yet despite Cameron's enthusiastic backing for marriage and mending the Broken Society (another powerful Mail theme) all it can say in its editorial is that the Tory manifesto deserves a "fair hearing".
Another reading of what was once Fleet Street shows a nagging unease in its ranks over what it perceives to be a collective failure by the main political parties to come up with a credible and detailed plan for reducing the deficit.
The Lib Dems with their launch today are seeking to exploit and remedy this discontent, boasting that their manifesto is the only one to have the guts and honesty to address this critical shortcoming. But then again, they will never be asked to be their ideas into operation.
A page one comment in the Telegraph by economics editor Edmund Conway deplores the failure of both Labour and Conservatives to address the central issue - the "terrifying state of the public finances".
So should Osborne and Cameron go further in spelling out the cuts to come? That would be a major risk since it would trigger much Labour caterwauling about Tory cuts and pitch the campaign onto territory that has proved a winner for Brown over the last decade.
Cameron will have to drop a lot further in the polls before he contemplates venturing into this swamp.
Nick Wood: David Cameron's vision of a Big Society is a genuinely radical idea which is in tune with Tory traditions
In the red corner, the Big State. In the blue corner, the Big Society. The battlelines are drawn today by David Cameron as he unveils the Conservative Party manifesto.
The media, ever anxious for a bit of colour to enliven the story, will contrast the garish Stalinist realism illustrating Labour's prospectus with the sober imagery of the Tory pitch for the nation's support.
A laughably phoney optimism from grumpy old Gordon Brown is pitted against an offering from baby-faced Mr Cameron positively dripping with gravitas. It is a neat clash of imagery with both leaders seeking to neutralise their negatives - gloom in Gordon's case, inexperience in Dave's.
But the real difference lies beneath the cover. Gordon may have so shattered the economy that he can no longer seek to bribe the voters with their own money - or more accurately bribe the voters with money borrowed from foreign investors. But for all the Blairite gloss, the great, lumbering Big State still lurks beneath the surface gobbling up £650 billion of our money every year and hungry for more as soon as there is any sign of an economic upturn.
Cameron is facing in the opposite direction with his notion that the Big Society can replace the Big State. It is both a genuinely radical idea and one in tune with the Tory tradition, from Burke's little platoons to the Trust the People message of the One Nation Conservatives to Maggie Thatcher's people power revolution of the 1980s, most clearly seen with her sales of council houses.
His vision is one of a Britain where the public is no longer the passive recipient of services doled out by the Big State, be they health, education, law enforcement or care of the disadvantaged.
"He [David Cameron] will allow people to be “your own boss, sack your MP, run your own school, own your own home, veto council tax rises, vote for your police, save your local pub or post office, and see how the government spends your money..."
Charities, individuals, volunteers, community groups and entrepreneurs will be invited to play a bigger role in the public square with the suffocating, meddlesome Big State pushed to the sidelines.
The theory is that this will make public services more devolved and more responsive to consumer demands. It will both raise standards and lower costs, a key factor with the public finances in such a parlous state.
In short, it is a truly radical idea and one that helps frame this curiously listless and amorphous campaign in a way that gives it a shape and a purpose.
Of course, doubts are legion about the practicality of what Cameron is proposing. Would NHS staff make a better job of running the local hospital than the senior management at the health trust or in Whitehall? Can parents run a school better than the professionals? How do you ensure that taxpayers' money is not filched by unscrupulous rogues infiltrating charities?
But if Cameron is serious, there are the makings of a Big Debate here about the country's future.
For some - maybe many - all this may be too esoteric, too abstract. But as "Red Tory" Phillip Blond has argued, the welfare state has done grave damage to the very people it was meant to serve - the working classes and the poor.
As Blond has argued:
"It was socialism that destroyed society. It was socialism that produced the centralising and disempowering state that destroyed working class life and socialism that produced the wanton middle class individualism of the 1960s that continues to underpin all the unequal moral and economic distribution of today."
Who created the underclass eking out an existence on benefits and drugs and booze on our council estate? The welfare state, the very agency that was meant to protect them.
That is the thesis. The danger is that a popular understanding of the perverse effects of the state is still too weak for Cameron's radical prescription to gain traction. Getting this message across may be more a job for government than for campaigning.
As the fight gets more intense and the polls stay too close for comfort, we may find ourselves moving back to more familiar Tory themes of tax, crime, immigration and Europe.
But Cameron deserves credit for trying to take the argument to a higher plain.
Gordon Brown's new-found aversion to spending commitments is as believable as the cartoon drunk vowing never to touch another drop of alcohol
"There are no big new spending commitments," says Gordon Brown in the foreword to Labour's manifesto.
That's a relief then. After a spending spree of historic proportions, which has bankrupted the economy and left us virtually defenceless in the face of the most savage recession of the post-war era, Brown has turned the taps off.
And what a spree it has been. In cash terms total public spending has doubled from £318 billion in 1997 to £644 billion this year. In 1997 the state swiped 40 per cent of national output, today it takes over 50 per cent.
And the public sector payroll has ballooned by around a million workers in the same time, boosting Labour's client state. The annual deficit stands at an eye-watering £170 billion and total national debt is around £1 trillion.
Nonetheless, the Prime Minister seems to think we should be grateful that he has finally seen the light, wittering on about his determination that every penny spent in future will be used wisely.
Really? So why doesn't he start by taking a look at the front page of today's Daily Mail, highlighting the fact that scores of health bosses, with salaries in excess of £100,000 have enjoyed pay rises of almost 7 per cent - more than twice the increase enjoyed by nurses. Scope for some savings there?
Or he could take a look at the pay of council chief executives. The Taxpayers' Alliance has just revealed the startling fact that more than 1,250 of these human dynamos earn more than £100,000 a year - around 150 more than in the previous year.
And we all know that while jobs and pay is being cut in the private sector, they are still growing in the bloated fantasy land of the public sector.
Of course, there has been no such Damascene conversion to the path of prudent financial management inside the Labour high command.
Gordon has just run out of money. He is already borrowing one pound in every four he spends and he knows that the markets won't bail him out for much longer.
So all of a sudden, after being the roadblock to public sector reform for most of the last decade, he is a Blairite again, trying to rekindle the consumer agenda he did so much to frustrate in No 11.
You have to admire the sheer, ocean-going, armour-plated brass neck of a man who is now trying to make a virtue of the havoc he has wreaked on the nation's finances.
Of course, it is not believable. Gordon is like the cartoon drunk, who vows that he will not touch another drop again after he has committed some appalling blunder. You know it's not true.
If Britain ever recovers and if Brown is re-elected, then he would be back to his spendthrift ways all over again, building up his beloved monster state. Fortunately, he is not going to get the chance.
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