His big interview with The Observer yesterday (a belated appeal to the disappointed Crouch End constituency perhaps) was completely undermined by David Cameron producing a policy last week, Tony Blair's on benefit claimants to be precise.
On Saturday (January 6), his henchman Ed Balls fronted up in the Telegraph to admit that, basically, Gordon had ballsed things up with the election non-story, Northern Rock and the missing data scandal.
Did Gordon know Ed was going to say all this? Is Ed positioning himself as a potential leader?
It's all rather odd and Brown in his interview pics today looks rather old and tired, the dodgy eye is playing up and the fingernails remain chewed.
Brown announced that he was going to show his mettle this year by taking "big decisions", presumably ordering more nuclear power stations, more housing encroachments on the "green belt" and more detention for supposed terrorists (well, we know he wants this, even if no one else, apart from the ever-loyal Sir Iain Blair supports him).
But do the voters actually want this?
All such decisions have at least as big a chance of being wrong as right.
And a much better than even chance of being unpopular, with the media just as much as voters.
Balls implied in his Telegraph interview that there'd be an election within 18 months (in theory Brown could hang on until 2010).
So spring next year looks like the time. Can Brown turn it round before then?
Also in The Observer, former Downing Street adviser Derek Draper (how could anyone in their right mind have hired flaky Derek as an adviser?) told Brown to let voters see the real Gordon, a control freak no doubt but someone who apparently enjoys watching the 'X-Factor' on a Saturday night with his family.
I don't believe this for a minute, it's all tosh like Gordon inviting the hacks in to watch the World Cup football at No. 11.
Gordon just doesn't get life like most people live it, and that probably doesn't matter too much because we expect politicians to be different.
But if he tries to reinvent himself as a man of the people, then the media will drive a coach and horses through it.
Lots of leading lights, like The Guardian's usually affable Simon Hoggart clearly despise the man. Never a good place to start from.
As it is, the honeymoon he enjoyed in the summer is well and truly over (Tony Blair's lasted about three years) and the only thing he can do is try to be himself and show he can cope with "events".
Forget the vision thing (we're already living with his high tax, high public expenditure vision, for better or worse) and just try to match up to the job.
Then the media can concentrate on Cameron and speculate on how new Liberal leader Nick Clegg (who'll probably do pretty well) will impact on the two main parties' prospects.
But the more ambitious and "visionary" Brown gets, the more the media will give him a good kicking.
If Brown can steer us through some stormy financial waters and strike some kind of a deal in Afghanistan then he might just win a new mandate.
And if doesn't, he would still go down as a PM who did pretty well in a short time with a difficult brief.
That looks like the best he can aim for.
Politics of the media is a regular series of opinion pieces for Brand Republic about the way media shapes politics and vice-versa. Stephen Foster is a partner at The Editorial Partnership and can be contacted at:steve-edco@blueyonder.co.uk.