Malcolm Turnbull is courting luck between now and Christmas to kick-start a 2018 recovery, but he'll need more than that.
With a trio of Nats stumped by dual citizenship, and the near insurmountable task of selling a credible climate energy policy to a riven party room, the hurdles only get taller as he proceeds.
As voters cool, fears mount that his unique bullishness on marriage equality, was misplaced.
Of course many voters, perhaps most, have already participated, but Newspoll suggests the forces of reaction and distraction are rallying.
Turnbull had some luck when the High Court approved the ABS postal survey, but this was purely procedural.
Failure in substance would ensure the survey question hangs like a dead weight around the Coalition's neck all the way to 2019. Plus, it would expose how the Coalition's cynical negation had been inadequately countermanded by Turnbull's supine campaigning.
Turnbull's lament after the 1999 republic referendum, describing John Howard as the leader who "broke this nation's heart" might yet attach to him. The irony.
Howard has since become Turnbull's lodestar but the mentee is yet to show equal political acumen or the leadership grit.
Try naming a single current policy argument over which the Prime Minister would be prepared to stand fast in the party room and, if required, resign.
The distended same-sex marriage survey is a case in point. Here, in the PM's lukewarm purpose, we see a dud mechanism neutered further by dud politics.
The grotesqueness of this non-binding, non-compulsory public evaluation of personal relationships is bad enough, but why so long? Voting from September 12 to November 7 is at least twice as long as necessary - more so for a debate so socially harmful.
Turnbull flagged early on that he would not campaign vigorously, even though he will vote for change. But why not? So he could traipse up and down Queensland announcing bypasses with Coalition nay-sayers who think scrutiny of the Coalition's low representation of women is "f---ed"?
The PM's stock answer that, along with wife Lucy he will vote yes, has become a banner for half-heartedness rather than the purpose it boasts. The couple's 20-second "yes" video notwithstanding.
As polls show support softening - amid what I've previously dubbed the right wing's "blizzard of red herrings" - Turnbull's reluctance to "lean in" looks feckless.
But it may also be reckless, turning a PM running dead into a dead man walking.
