Tough business, politics. You win in glorious splendor; you lose in brutal ignomy; and either way, it's right out there for the entire world to see. But then again, nobody holds a gun to their heads. Enter Stephane Dion, the hapless Liberal leader since his upset 2006 convention victory who last week lead his party to their worst showing since the original Confederation election.

"I failed," he conceded on Monday afternoon in Ottawa. "In my consultations it became very clear, that in the door-to-door canvassing, my colleagues, my friends, were told, 'We don't like your leader.'"

The problem with pleading for pity after the fact is that it ignores the reality that during the campaign several senior Liberal operatives kept trying to tell Dion that his so-called "Green Shift" wasn't working. Yet the 53-year-old former professor, ever the haughty academic, dismissed their concerns out of hand.

Even in claiming that he was personally responsible for his party's debacle, Dion scrambled to deflect personal blame.

On the Green Shift, for example, he said it was an "avant-garde" policy that "perhaps could have been better explained to Canadians."

There you go, typical Liberal arrogance. It's not that people thought it was a dumb policy - which it was - it was that, well, unlike him, they just didn't understand it. If only he'd had the time to draw it out in crayons for those idiotic Canadians who didn't understand the value of placing a huge tax on energy at a time of economic chaos, he could have been prime minister. Can't you see that?

Then, of course, there are those nasty Tory advertisements which painted a "negative" picture of Dion and his policy. "We cannot afford to let others distort or confuse just because they have more money," he said, apparently missing the extraordinary irony of this claim. For decades, that's exactly what the Liberals did to keep themselves in power. They're still doing it - remember Stephen Harper's deadly "hidden agenda" - it's just that Canadians are wise to them now.

Dion did fool many in his party - and no doubt upset them too - by refusing to buckle to internal pressure and step down right away. HE says he'll stay until a new leader is chosen "in order to ensure a smooth and successful transition."

The Liberals did have a scheduled policy conference for Vancouver in May - a mandatory leadership review vote after each election is in the party's constitution - but that will obviously be changed to a leadership convention and likely moved up in the calendar.

Everybody goes on about how "decent" Dion is. Sure he is. So what? Is Harper indecent? Or Jack Layton? Or any of the others. What's that got to do with anything? It's the kind of damning-with-faintpraise approach which indicates there is nothing really positive to say about his actual performance.

As a leader, he was an absolute disaster. He could barely speak English and had even more trouble understanding it. He hung his hat on a doomed policy.

And while Harper - justifiably - gets criticized for being a one-man band, Dion refused to take advice from anybody. For all that, however, the Liberals have far more problems than just Dion's poor leadership. A recent Ipsos Reid survey, for example, found that almost two-thirds of respondents found Liberals as "dishonest," Eighty percent think they are "stale," 63 per cent found Liberals "phony," and 60 percent said they are "out of touch with Canadians like you."

This disastrous view of the Liberal brand has been a while in the making. Dion didn't help, but he didn't do it all by himself. Jean Chretien and Paul Martin are up to their necks in it too. The so-called "Natural Governing Party," has been steadily losing support in areas it used to simply take for granted. Canadians have finally had enough of their inherent "sense of entitlement," the widely-held view within the party that, because they are Liberals, they are entitled to whatever they demand.

Well, they're almost invisible west of Ontario now. And for the first time since 1984, the Tories won more seats in Ontario than the Liberals did. And in essence, the Liberals are reduced to Metro Toronto - and even that is showing cracks - central Montreal and pockets in Atlantic Canada.

It's not likely that Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff, John Manley, Frank McKenna, Gerard Kennedy or Martha Hall Findlay can turn that around quickly - assuming one of them becomes the new leader.

It took them decades to fritter away their partisan goodwill, so it's likely going to take years to win it back, no matter who replaces Dion.

As for Dion himself, well, in the end, he just didn't have it. Simple as that. No need to feel sorry for him. He knew what he was getting into.