If it were a criminal case, Brendan Nelson would have recourse to the doctrine of equality of arms, but this is politics.
Mr 9 Per Cent Preferred Prime Minister cuts a forlorn figure against the beaming 70 per cent for Kevin Rudd in this week's Newspoll.
But most, if not all, of the huge discrepancy can be attributed to the abysmal circumstances Nelson finds himself in, not much of it of his personal making. At the macro level is an emphatic and recent election defeat and the double vacuum of Coalition leadership it created.
At the daily level throughout this first sitting fortnight, there have been the political free kicks for Rudd of the national apology to the Stolen Generations (impossible for 1112 years) and the dismantling of the WorkChoices package (the result of relentless, targeted and handsomely resourced campaigning).
Absent those circumstances, Nelson has actually mirrored Rudd's performance in the House. When Rudd was pursued anew about contact with the failed fraudster and former premier Brian Burke, he gave the matter no oxygen.
His answer to the week's first question was the best example.
"As I have said on a number of occasions, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I would not have met with Mr Burke. As I have said on many occasions, I got that wrong ... As for [Foreign Minister Stephen Smith's] comments [that Burke should have been persona non grata for 15 years], he, of course, had the benefit of particular insights in the West. I recognise his better insight on these questions. I should have had that insight myself at the time. I accept full responsibility for my actions."
How about that for Hemingway-style short sentences from a politician, cutting the throat of the problem by admitting so much culpability (but no more) in quick, clean fashion?
Nelson has done a similar job with generally sharp questions, aimed at or about Treasurer Wayne Swan.
At him (on Tuesday): "Is the Treasurer aware of comments of the newly-appointed petrol commissioner ... 'I haven't promised them significant savings. I think it is a naive notion that petrol is going to dramatically reduce'? "Treasurer, will the appointment of the petrol commissioner reduce the price of petrol and, if so, when and by how much?"
About him (to Rudd on Wednesday): "Will the Prime Minister explain to Australians with a home loan how they can have faith in a Treasurer who, when asked important questions about the economy, dismisses them as a 'pop quiz' and then confesses that 'Sometimes I will have the details on hand and sometimes I will not'?"
The first one got one of the indirect responses that have been Swan's hallmark so far in the job.
The second got a long tangential introduction before Rudd turned on the TV-clip performance of "impassioned defence of embattled Treasurer", which, while strong, was not the personal endorsement that might have been expected.
Nelson's stoic performances in Parliament have been exceeded by his work in the party room, where he told his team that the 9 per cent poll was only to be expected "in the environment we're in".
He is taking all the public heat still radiating over the Howard-Costello government, manifested most obviously in WorkChoices.
Nelson's swift move to declare it "dead" was the right politics, but the confusion allowed to run about the life of Australian Workplace Agreements under proposed amendments by the Coalition to Labor's transition Bill, and about Coalition insistence on those amendments in the Senate it controls, have hurt the Opposition.
Deputy Liberal leader and industrial-relations shadow minister Julie Bishop held a press conference on Tuesday trying to tiptoe through this minefield. It took half an hour. She was less than definitive.
Soon after, in the House, Nelson made clear that Labor's Bill would, ultimately, pass both Houses. A simple, clear message.
While Nelson might seem smooth on the surface, he has been paddling like hell underneath, listening to colleagues and doing plenty to heal a party wounded by the election loss and the disappearance of its best performer, Peter Costello.
Nelson has impressed even some of those who supported Malcolm Turnbull in last year's leadership ballot. New shadow minister Bob Baldwin is probably Nelson's best mate in the party room. He and Joe Hockey share Canberra digs with Nelson.
Unsurprisingly, Baldwin reckons Nelson is going okay, but he's got a good case, reminding the world that the leader was always an approachable minister for Liberal backbenchers, visiting electorates, speaking at functions and opening whatever needed to be opened.
That spade work has been refined in Opposition, where Nelson has won over (or at least soothed) many colleagues with his collegial approach during the Coalition joint-parties' two-day meeting in the week before Parliament resumed.
"People [MPs and Senators] have been impressed," Baldwin says, noting a return of the fire familiar with the former education minister, who was forced to adopt a different persona in his latter role as defence minister.
The bad luck for Nelson is that politics is never a fair contest. It doesn't matter that he has not personally created all of the circumstances he is in, the perception of those circumstances will still determine his fate.
While the healing and listening process he has begun could build its own momentum, the law of averages is against the Opposition Leader installed after the 2007 election.
The two leaders of the Opposition installed after the two previous elections, Simon Crean and Kim Beazley, were not still at the helm by the time of the following election.
So far, Nelson has shown himself undeserving of a similar fate - but we've only had the first exchange of blows in the opening seconds of a 15-round contest.
Baldwin proclaims Nelson to be a gritty fighter. He's going to need to be, having to keep throwing punches while keeping a constant eye and ear on his own corner.
Andrew Fraser is political correspondent.