In one week, I have been witness to two major Prime Ministerial speeches: the first, on Monday, in which John Howard launched a raft of policies at the Liberals' campaign launch in Brisbane (I have always liked that image, that of the policy raft, beating on against the current); and another today in Adelaide, on economic management.

Both these speeches were high on rhetoric; prime cuts, in a sense, of neo-liberal ideology. They were also high, the more cynical among us noted, on weasel words, dog-whistling and spin. In this sense, they were pointedly political.

For Howard, power is not an end unto itself, but rather a means by which he might effect his ideological agenda. But to wield power you must win it, and the ideological agenda, to the extent that it might prevent you from doing so, is liable, not to change exactly, but rather to be pressed into a shape that will better suit the political reality of the given moment.

Over the course of the last week, as I have travelled around the country, I have become increasingly aware of the balance that Howard's campaign, and indeed his prime ministership more generally, have struck between ideological purity and political expediency.

Though his critics may choose to pigeonhole him as a right-wing zealot or a ferocious political animal (the two, I think, are to some extent incompatible, and the fact that he has been characterised as both goes some of the way towards invalidating the criticism), a few up-close-and-personal encounters with the man, and a few ripples on the surface of the stage-managed image, suggest to me that, love him or loathe him (as he may say), he has gotten the balance more or less right.

It has been in the interstitial moments, the moments that never quite make it into the news, that this has been most obvious. It has been in these moments that one has gotten a sense of the man who, earlier, one would have sworn wasn't there.

Obviously, there is a difference between the J-Ho of the ten-second television sound byte and that of the twenty-minute press conference from which the sound byte has been taken. The latter, I think it is fair to say, is infinitely more likable.

For a start, he is surprisingly funny. The Prime Minister likes to spar with journalists, albeit on his on terms, and is able to give as good as he gets.

"You seemed a little bit tetchy at yesterday's press conference," a journalist probed in today's doorstop. "How you holding up under the pressure of the campaign?"

"Tetchy, did I?" Howard shot back. "Well, let me think of a suitable adjective for your question, Tim. Could I say 'searching', 'inquiring', 'persistent', 'cheeky', 'provocative'? No, I'll say 'understandable' and 'well-informed'..."

Earlier in the week, when all anyone seemed interested in how he felt about computers, Howard delivered what was probably one of the most sarcastic lines of the campaign.

"Look, I'm not here to attack computers. I think we all like computers. Computers are a wonderful aid and we love them. They make our lives so joyous."

The gentlemen and women of the press actually have quite a lot of fun with the man. As one correspondent for The Australian put it: "I'm going to miss him."

What's more, compared to his hyperactive competitor, who apparently spins like a Whirling Dervish in his press conferences, Howard is surprisingly willing to answer questions (however obliquely), discuss the ideological detail of his policies, and thrash around ideas with the press, at least to some extent.

It is in these moments, the moments that, supposedly, would be too dull, too free of slogans, for the evening news, that one gets a sense of the conviction politician, the man who genuinely believes in what he's selling and genuinely believes he's doing good.

And then he puts his lips together and blows, mentioning upwards pressure on interest rates or resurgent union power. As dog's ears all over the country perk up, you are reminded that he is in the midst of battle and that conviction, however convicted, only goes so far.

None of this is to say that I agree or disagree with the man's policies any more or less than when I started following him a week ago. Merely it is to suggest that, where once I saw him as the very image of the will to power, now I have, not an understanding of the man (I wonder if anyone can truly understand a person like this, or indeed whether anyone would truly want to), at least a more complex and nuanced view on what makes him tick, where he's coming from, and how and why he plays the game.

And as my week on the campaign trail comes to an end, I realise that I'm going to miss him, too.