In December 2004, I wrote a column for this page titled "Lucien Bouchard haunts us still." Given his latest spectacular sortie and how much attention the media gave him - including me - I guess he still does.
In 2004, after he'd published a number of substantial opinion pieces in La Presse and a year before he would spearhead the famed Manifeste des Lucides, La Presse commissioned a poll by CROP asking if Quebecers wished for Bouchard's return to politics.
The results, needless to say, made the front page: 49 per cent answered yes.
At the time, I wrote that such a return was highly unlikely if only because since his resignation on Jan. 11, 2001, Bouchard had come to yield true influence among some federalists and most Parti Québécois and Bloc elites anyway. Back then, he was also rumoured to be close to Mario Dumont, leader of the ADQ.
But now that Bouchard has accused Pauline Marois's PQ of flirting with radicalism and labelled sovereignty one of those dreams that might never come true, his influence over this PQ establishment can be expected to wane somewhat.
Especially given the warm kudos he predictably received from Liberal leaders Michael Ignatieff and Jean Charest this week, and the support of editorials from La Presse's André Pratte, who lauded Bouchard's "lucidity," and The Gazette, which welcomed Bouchard's "trenchant criticism of the PQ's slide into xenophobic hysteria."
Not exactly the kind of material that will make it into Marois's scrapbook of warm memories from her years in politics.
On the other hand, it's likely that fewer Quebecers would wish for Bouchard's return to politics today. For one thing, even if it's no state secret that he is a conservative on most economic issues - he was a top minister in Brian Mulroney's government - his public adventures with the "Lucides" in 2005 revealed him to be more of an ultraconservative kind of a guy.
And ultraconservatism doesn't fly well in Québec. Not since Maurice Duplessis, anyway.
In 2006, Bouchard also publicly admonished Quebecers for not working hard enough and for being less productive than our friendly Ontarian and American neighbours. That didn't go over particularly well.
On Tuesday night, in a Quebec City event by Le Devoir, Bouchard came out swinging, targetting not only the PQ, but just about anyone who thinks that a debate should take place here - as it has in a number of other Western societies - on secularism, the rise of religious fundamentalism and reasonable accommodation.
For Bouchard, all of Quebec society, not just the PQ, has to become more open.
"Humanism and openness, that's what we need in Quebec," he said. To say this to a population that's markedly more open to diversity isn't bound to go over well either.
Yesterday, a Le Devoir/Léger Marketing poll showed that as many as 75 per cent of respondents think the Charest government is too accommodating to religious-based demands. This is a trend the polls have shown for the past three years.
So basically, Jean Charest gets an "F" for his failure to address these important issues, be it through the adoption of a charter of securalism or other measures to better ensure the state's neutrality.
(On the same day, another poll by Léger for the Journal de Montréal, found 43 per cent believe this debate is futile. But this was a small sample of only 570 people.)
In other words, Bouchard appears to grow less and less in synch with many Quebecers on some issues. Still, of course, he's entitled to his opinions and is free to express them.
It's just that he keeps creating the impression that Quebecers don't work hard enough, aren't tolerant enough, aren't focused on the kind of neocon agenda he favours and that sovereignists should simply move on. The "charismatic"and popular Bouchard is slowly morphing into the less seductive role of a grumpy, ultra-conservative mother superior.
For a man who's so charming in real life, that kind of image and the messages it carries aren't too becoming.
So while Bouchard still commands formidable attention from the media and the powerful milieus he frequents, these kinds of sorties risk costing him credibility among the general population over time.