IT’S widely accepted that Katrina was conjured in the cauldron of climate change, with Tim Flannery warning that as our waters warm, similarly turbo-charged cyclones will hit our eastern coast. And what of George and Jacob out west? Are they also symptoms of global warming? Dunno, but here goes with a weather forecast. There’s a hurricane called Kevin bearing down on John Howard.
Unless the Libs find hard evidence that Rudd danced naked on a mardi gras float, he’s going to blow Howard from the Lodge and Kirribilli. And perhaps even negatives of nude prancing in Sydney’s Oxford Street wouldn’t suffice: they might enhance Rudd’s electoral allure, given that he seems just a teeny bit humourless. Certainly having din-dins with Brian Burke wasn’t enough to do him in. Nor was the shadow attorney-general’s silly letter to the Licensing Board.
In fact, Rudd’s role in the political climate change may be of quite secondary importance to what’s happening, as clearly the same winds are blowing in London and Washington. Yes, Tony Blair’s attempt at a victory lap has the crowds cheering but simply because he’s finally going. And George Bush’s surge hasn’t produced the desired result, which was not some small success in Baghdad but a surge in his domestic popularity. Now the three musketeers of the Iraq war are to share the same fate: compulsory retirement.
Their moment has well and truly passed. The porkies on Iraq are just the tip of their political icebergs, and in the case of Bush and Howard there are icebergs. (I refer, of course, to Paul Keating’s killer line on Costello.) More and bigger bergs than ever before, thanks to climate change. Only Blair got global warming right. In the case of John and George, the melting glaciers and ice-shelf are a real issue. Their joint denials and, in Dubya’s case, on-the-record ridicule of climate change have come back to haunt and hurt.
It wasn’t necessary for many in the US to make the connection between Katrina and global warming for the events in New Orleans to become a titanic problem for the White House. The maladministration of the Bush administration did more than enough. And far from Howard’s catch-up on climate change helping, it seems to have made matters worse. The punters detect more than a hint of insincerity in his response and, in any case, there’s something different and deeper going on: a widespread feeling that enough Howard is more than enough.
It isn’t necessary for the punters to be wildly enthusiastic about the alternative, be that Rudd or Costello. Voltaire got it right. If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we will find something new.
Howardism is, or was, a fascinating phenomenon. For example, Howard haters were always more numerous than Howard lovers. While there were moments when the response to him was enthusiastic, it was never affectionate. Shades of Richard Nixon. Even on his side of politics, Howard’s not been much liked. As with the Republicans who gave the nod to Tricky Dicky, the ascension of Honest John was the price the Libs had to pay to win office: a view with parallels on the ALP side in regard to Rudd.
(God help us, the Labor caucus was willing to pay the price of Mark Latham. That makes Kevin both a bargain and a blessing.)
Clearly, many Liberals were uneasy about Howard from day one. The rejected leader they reluctantly re-elected came after a Labor-style mess in Opposition. Even after winning office, Howard was for many Libs a guilty pleasure because of a raft of issues, from his manipulation and appropriation of the prejudices of One Nation to his reckless and preposterously theatrical response to a few boatloads of asylum-seekers. And although their silence was deafening, disgracefully so, many on his front and back benches found his attitude towards the Bush administration both embarrassing and dangerous.
Now some very big chooks, strongly resembling vultures, are coming home to roost, and it won’t much help Howard if the economy remains strong and the Reserve Bank restrains itself on further rate increases. The electorate is sick of him. They don’t like his attacks on Rudd’s character: this from a PM whose own leaves so much to be desired, such as truthfulness, integrity and any sense of moral purpose in his political life. The very skills that made Howard seem formidable and indestructible now make him look shonky.
And the co-ordinated attack on KR is purest KR: Kevin Rudd versus Karl Rove. It proves yet again the degree of dependence that the once liberal Libs have on the hard Right of the US Republican Party, and in particular on the Rove White House. Rove has been even more crucial to the career of the puppet president than Dick Cheney. He’s been calling the shots since Bush was a mediocre governor in Texas.
The Libs take much more than their marching orders (to Iraq) from the Bush push. It’s not just their foreign policy that arrives hourly by email from Washington when it’s not being personally delivered by the Vice-President or the ambassador.
Howard’s policy of denial on climate change came word for word from the White House, having originated in conservative think tanks funded by the administration’s mates in the oil and coal industries.
But the US input into Australian politics is at its most virulent and ugly in the Howard-Costello attacks on Rudd: straight from Rove’s textbook The Politics of Personal Destruction. It worked against John Kerry and is being used against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Thankfully, there’s little evidence it’s working here.
What could save Howard? Certainly not more tut-tutting about Rudd’s alleged lack of character or courage. The punters aren’t buying that, at least not in sufficient numbers. Only a local 9/11 could salvage Howard, just as the American version saved a discredited Bush administration. The pity is that here, as in the US, it’s taken such a long, long time for the winds to change.