Toronto ? Paul Martin, who faces an uphill battle to retain his prime minister’s post in next week’s elections, came to power 18 months ago with a reputation for slaying the national debt and cutting unemployment.

Since then, he has earned the nickname “Mr. Dithers,” as a politician unable to implement his policies – such as improving relations with the United States – because of flip-flops.

Now Martin’s Liberal Party appears poised to fall to the Conservatives for the first time in 13 years in Monday’s elections, according to polls.

“There was this enormous gap between his rhetoric and obvious goodwill, on the one hand, and delivery on the other,” Simeon said.

Martin’s minority government was toppled in November, his party hindered by corruption scandals and broken promises – a theme his opponent, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, has played on in his bid for Canada’s highest office.

“I would think that it must be just awful, because he knows the measure by which he has fallen short,” John Gray, author of the biography “Paul Martin, The Power of Ambition,” told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that he must know that all those dreams he had are coming to nothing.”

Martin, 67, was born into Liberal politics.

When Martin was sworn in as prime minister for the first time in December 2003, he held the Canadian flag that had flown at half-staff on Parliament Hill the day his father died.

Liberal Leader Paul Martin leaps over a divider to join a group of day-care children during a rally Friday in St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. Canadians go to the polls Monday to elect a new federal government.

Martin overcame polio as a child and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy, then a law degree, at the University of Toronto.

He married the girl next door, Sheila Cowan, with whom he has three sons. Martin calls her his closest adviser; when they are not together, they speak to each other dozens of times a day by phone.

He first worked for the Montreal-based conglomerate Power Corporation of Canada and later became president and sole owner of Canada Steamship Lines. By 1998, he owned 37 companies, operating everything from freight ships to apartment buildings, movie theaters and office buildings.

By the time Martin was elected to Parliament in 1988 as Liberal candidate in a Montreal district, he was a multimillionaire. A fiscal conservative, Martin served as finance minister under Jean Chretien from 1993 to 2002.

He was widely praised for erasing a $36 billion deficit, paying down more than $31 billion in debt and putting in place the largest tax cuts in Canadian history. The Liberals have had eight consecutive budget surpluses and last November, Ottawa boasted an unemployment rate of 6.4 percent, the lowest in 31 years.

But since taking over after Chretien stepped down in December 2003, Martin has been unable to strike a clear vision for himself or party.

He pledged to improve relations with the United States, nearly frozen after Chretien balked at the U.S. invasion of Iraq and refused to join the coalition.

But relations have hardly improved, with Martin snubbing the White House offer to join in an anti-ballistic missile continental shield and Ottawa continually pounding Washington on what it perceived as unfair trade practices.