Conservative campaign diary: A day in the life

As I recapped last winter, a day in the life of the prime minister's director of communicationscan be bloody difficult.

But how does it compare to life on the campaign trail? I only had the pleasure of serving on oneleader's tour 2011's majority-winning campaign but this is what I remember it feeling like.

• OPINION: Rallying the faithful secret to Conservative success
• Deconstructing the campaign playbook
• A (sort of) day in the life of a PMO director of communications

6 a.m. Wake up. Figure out what city you're in. Lament crap sleep because party (rightly)crammed you in with a colleague to save on cost.

6:00:01 a.m. Freak out momentarily because you think you've missed luggage call or motorcade. Curse wagonmaster for drilling tour protocols so robustly into your brain.

6:01 a.m. Quick scan of the news on out-dated party BlackBerry that crashes even more thanbrand-spanking new government BlackBerry did.

6:10 a.m. Get into the shower ahead of roommate to ensure adequate supply of crap shampoo andcheap soap.

6:30 a.m. Plot the day's Terry Milewski mitigation strategy. Place over/under bets on the length ofthe preamble to his question, and a bet on whether the leader will include "I reject thepremise of your question" in his answer.

6:40 a.m. 7:10 a.m. Give full attention to previous day's coverage. Lament crapness of it. Fire off emails to reporters. Receive angry emails back informing me the party war room hasalready fired off salvo of (apparently unappreciated) emails to said journos.

7:10 a.m. 7:30 a.m. Stumble out to look for breakfast. Luckily, as you're touring swing suburbanridings, there is always a Tim Hortons (or four) within walking distance. Scarf down a breakfastsandwich, or Timatin,if you're in la belle province.

7:30 a.m. 8:45 a.m. Briefing call with the war room. Review media coverage. Review theopposition's coverage.Prep for morning message event. Take battery out and rebootBlackBerry.

9 a.m. 9:30 a.m. Shoot the breeze with reporters on the bus to the venue.Understand now why you don't typically see them on Parliament Hill until later in the morning. Handout press releases/backgrounders and attempt to deduce the direction of today's media travel (hint:not in your direction).

Hope for good plane food

9:30 a.m. Wait for the Van Dusen o'clock call that doesn't come because you didn't give JulieVan Dusen your campaign number.

9:35 a.m. Take call from Julie Van Dusen who, through trickery or black magic, has now obtainedyour campaign phone number.

9:40 a.m. 9:45 a.m. Survey the media cage at message event. Test its strength. Identify possiblejourno escape routes and lock them down.

9:45 a.m. 10 a.m. Final briefing for the leader ahead of his announcement.Regretfully inform him that none of the questions are likely to be about the announcement he'smaking. Duck.

10 a.m. 10:20 a.m. Run the announcement. Moderate Q&A session. Collect on/pay outMilewski bets.

10:20 a.m. 11:30 a.m. Hover around reporters as they prepare their first cut on stories. MonitorTV hits. Prepare for inevitable complaints about broadband speedon the bus. Reboot BlackBerry.

12 p.m. Board flight for next destination. Hope against hope airline food is good so as to avert press revolt. Set up mini-hockey net at end of aisle for the game of fruit bowling duringtake-off. Survey plane to ensure transport minister not on board, as this is surely a contravention ofTransport Canada rules.

4 p.m. Land in new town. Prep for arrival shot. Scan landscape for unwanted signs telling the leader to"foxtrot" off. Admire sign-holders' tenacity while feeling sorry for them for drawing the shortstraw in the opposition war room duty roster.

4:30 p.m. 5 p.m. Execute "quick pic" photo op with press pool. If this is in Quebec, this willinvariably involve poutine, maple syrup or a casse-crote of local repute. If anywhere else in thecountry, this will involve a Tim Hortons, hockey rink, or ethnic food appropriate to the riding. Triplebonus points if the tour team can combine all three in one picture.

5:30 p.m. Run local interviews. See leader visibly relax as he realises local reporters want to talk aboutlocal issues and not inside Ottawa trivia like how many questions national reporters should get.

Lament, take issue

6 p.m. Arrive at rally site. Survey journo cage and cutaway position cage (cages, if we're feelingsaucy), and survey potential escape routes for cagey reporters.

6:10 p.m. Cringe whilethe wonderful and hardworking tech team sound checks Collective Soul'sBetter Now a.k.a. the campaign's hype music for the 8,434th time, in the process earning CollectiveSoul the only money its earned since 1993. Reflect on how thankful I am that this election is notabout taste in music.

6:15 p.m. 6:45 p.m. Further indulge masochistic trait by debating the F-35 program with StevenChase of the Globe and Mail. Emerge bloody, but unbroken.

6:45 p.m. Stuff soggy Subway sandwich into gullet.

7 p.m. 8 p.m. Watch the leader rally the troops. Watch supporters' faces light upand get reminded how rare it is to work directly for the leader of a country. Keep eagle eye onsupporters behind him to make sure none of them go wobbly.

8:30 p.m. Check into hotel and sprint to room to claim the "better" bed before roomie shows up.Head to hotel business centre to print out releases (hey it was 2011) for the next day'sGainsburger. Read them for the first time to ensure I know what the hell I'm going to be talkingabout the next day. Hopefully this does not involve using a calculator.

9 p.m. 10 p.m. Participate in nightly tour call. Discuss various journalist caging tactics andquick pic options. If food pic selected, plot how we will achieve desired picture while not having foodanywhere near the leader's mouth.

10 p.m. Watch nightly news. Lament fact that virtually none of what we worked so hard toproduce to fit into these 2-minute slots actually makes it into these slots. Take issue withCBCThe National'sAtIssuepanel. Realize BlackBerry charger is on the plane.

11 p.m. Fall asleep, but only after laying out the next day's clothes and prepacking the rest.Repeat 41 more times (ah, remember the days of short campaigns?).

Andrew MacDougall is a former director of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He is now the senior executive consultant at MSLGROUP London. Follow him@agmacdougall.