My Political Wisdom

This column first appeared in The Canberra Times, 8 October 2007

You might have noticed that there’s been a lot in the news recently about politics. Not here, of course. When I started writing this column, all those long months ago, it was agreed that it would usually be a politics-free zone. Talk about elections and policy was left to the political pundits who write for this paper. This page was to be more concerned with pithy comments on pop culture and cruel jokes about Sienna Miller.

This is fine with me, as I’m not a political pundit. In fact, there’s much I don’t understand about politics. For starters, why should people in electorates like Bennelong and Griffith be expected to vote for local members who will be too busy to ever focus on local issues? How are you supposed to get your highway fixed when your local member is in Japan trying to negotiate a new greenhouse treaty?

Also, why can’t politicians change their minds, after being presented with new evidence or convincing new arguments, without being attacked as “flip-floppers” or “backflippers”? Most of us would rightly be classed as stubborn, arrogant, narrow-minded fools if we DIDN’T do this occasionally.

Strangely, most political pundits are actually in agreement right now. As The Bulletin magazine boldly proclaimed on its cover a year ago, over a smiling picture of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard: “They can win.” Everyone agrees. They CAN, maybe, quite possibly, perhaps, win. Well, that’s REALLY putting the media’s reputation on the line!

But as someone who has written for that fine magazine on many occasions, I must point that that The Bulletin’s cover often gets it wrong. Back in the eighties, they had a scathing cover story on then Opposition leader John Howard: “Mr 18 percent – why does this man bother?” Of course, we now have our answer – and yes, it’s amazing to think that the PM’s ratings were once almost as bad as Bert’s Family Feud. In fact, he was once even less popular than he is now.

In more recent years, that prestigious cover has tipped that the Labor Party would win the 2001 election, proclaimed the death of Labor in 2004, and once even predicted that Simon Crean was “the next Labor Prime Minister”. (Incidentally, that last one is still within the realms of possibility. Probably not, though.) Such was the analysis of their own political pundits.

Ditto with my politically astute colleagues. In fact, despite my ignorance, I’ve worked out something that political pundits keep saying which is NEVER correct.

You know that stuff about how we vote for the candidate we like the most? Are they trying to say that, in all these years, nobody has been more likeable than John Howard? Hey, at the time, I was quietly pleased by the symbolism of the 1996 election result: a cocky, super-cool bully like Paul Keating getting pummelled by a class nerd like Howard. But for all the talk of how much everyone hated Keating, some of us actually had a grudging fondness for the Noel Gallagher of Australian politics. Who could blame us? He spoke what was on his mind, and he wasn’t a square like Howard.

Since then, Howard has twice beaten Kim Beazley. Everyone liked Kim. He was a nice, amiable bloke who couldn’t possibly upset anyone. People just didn’t want to vote for him.

Which was fair enough. When we choose our PM, we’re choosing a guy (so far, it’s always a guy) for a high-stress, insecure job, where he is in enough danger to be surrounded by around-the-clock security guards, and is often the most despised and ridiculed person in the country. Despite all his hard work, he still wouldn’t get paid nearly as much as Celine Dion, and despite their best attempts, most Prime Ministers haven’t been able to cause nearly as much suffering as Celine. Only a deranged masochist could possibly want this job – and nobody likes a deranged masochist.

Who would you choose for a soul-destroying and unforgiving job like that? Naturally, you’d go for the guy you really hate! For years, it’s been quite clear that John Howard has been hated more than anyone else. But in Kevin Rudd, if the opinion polls are correct, we might have someone we hate even more. Thanks to some of his critics, who suggest that his smirk and his ability to be really boring are more important than his policies, we hate him more and more – and however despicable Howard tries to be, he still can’t be nearly as hated as Rudd.

Of course, Howard has tried some last-minute tricks in the past. The “children overboard” debacle one election, the Tasmanian anti-environment deal the next. Just as it seems he’s lost his job, he does something that makes us really hate him, and romps to victory. It remains to be seen if we can still hate Rudd with such passion come election day.

See? Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If you need any more political wisdom, you know who to call.