Rudd talks about his grand plans but, in reality, he keeps closing off his options, lumbering himself with commitments to keep pursuing Howard’s policies.

Which goes to show that Howard really is the cleverest politician of his generation. Even if he loses this election he will have dictated the bulk of his opponents’ policies for at least their first term.

Howard would be ruling from the political grave.

This is exactly the point I was making in the previous post. Rudd is in fact narrowing the political debate more than Howard ever did because he’s elevating Howard into a concept, an economic consensus, rather than just the person we’ve had to contend with for the last ten years.

Which brings me to the question – is this massive swing to Labor really so radical a change? Isn’t it in fact Howard who is the radical in this election? Howard is the one proposing a radical restructuring of industrial relations. Howard is the one committing to a high risk foreign policy in Iraq (one that is becoming increasingly marginalised). Even his climate change policy is more radical than Rudd’s because it breaks from international consensus and sets up its own independent treaty. And before you can say ‘education revolution’ note Gittin’s article:

The Howard Government has increased its grants to private schools and changed the previous Labor government’s needs-based funding formula to one biased in favour of elite schools. Rudd has promised to increase grants and keep the Liberals’ formula until at least 2012.

Whatever Rudd may really stand for, the public perception is that he is the safe option, promising conformism back to the centre. I’m not in favour of Howard’s policies (far from it) but what their reception reveals is that, in the Australian psyche, real political change remains increasingly marginal.

It’s a repeated criticism of Rudd’s campaign but it’s also nothing new. What we are seeing is merely the latest assimilating movement of capitalism coming to Australia a little late. According to the philosophy of Me Tooism, the obstacle to the unfettered reign of capitalism (the Left) is instead transformed into its positive impetus. What seems to actually moderate capitalism actually works better for it. Witness the Chinese communists presiding over the most explosive development of capitalism in recent history or the ideological shift made by Britain’s ‘Third Way’ social democracy.

What Blair did with his ‘Third Way’ was to take the chaotic, impulsive and unforeseeable Thatcher economic revolution and stabilise it, making it more palatable for voters by providing minimal safeguards and regulatory interventions. Indeed, a lot of commentators have noted that Blair has succeeded in forging consensus on and actually institutionalising Thatcher’s reforms.

My fear is that this is exactly what we are seeing with Rudd. ‘Howardism’ may not have existed before now but it wouldn’t surprise me if such a thing emerges after the election. Rudd is effectively repeating Howard’s economic conservatism and turning what before was a person into a concept, what before was contingency into necessity. The idea driving Rudd’s campaign is ‘we can do it better’ and by doing it ‘better’ he also further narrows the coordinates of the debate – now we are all ‘economic conservatives’.

Third Way social democracy from Clinton to Blair (and now Rudd) is in fact a model that ultimately works better for capitalism itself. Unfettered capitalism would lead to social chaos. Through moderation you indefinitely postpone the antagonisms of capital. The question is, as Slavoj Zizek notes: for how long?

Below is a letter I sent to the Australian in response to an article that criticised leftists for their mythologising of Che Guevara. It was unpublished but I’m posting it here because I think it explicates the sometimes blatant hypocrisy of The Australian’s ideological slant, an area of concern that has raised more than a few eyebrows with their ‘Liberal’ interpretation of recent political poll numbers.

To Cassandra Wilkinson
RE: ‘The Unpalatable Truth About Che Guevara’ July 14-15.

You are right. Up to a point.

Leftists are clearly wrong to hagiography Che Guevara, as with any figurehead. As a leftist myself, I find such messianic worship embarrassing and even infantile. And the points you make about his human rights violations and the post-revolutionary conditions are obviously valid, as much as they acknowledge the failure of Cuba’s revolutionary state.

However, it is important here to fully confront what it is about Guevara that inspires people. Otherwise your article misses the point and degenerates into the boring back and forth of ideological politics. What you fail to do is identify the utopian spark in Guevara that is worth saving - his opening up of another path to restore social justice and forge a better alternative to Western capitalism. So, yes, you are right - we should accept the fact that Guevara failed in his revolutionary mission, even failed horrifically, but we must also distinguish between what Guevara effectively did and the field of possibilities that he opened up. To paraphrase philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the challenge for leftists is to repeat not what Guevara did, but what he failed to do, his missed opportunities. It is the ideological fudging of history that says one necessarily leads on from the other (eg. revolution and tyranny, discipline and fascism).

This is why MCA’s recent use of the Guevara icon is still justified. The image has become autonomous from the man. It is a symbol that invokes the possibilities he opened up, the hope that history would eventually be on the side of those struggling for social justice.

Perhaps I can also suggest that your points would have more credence if your paper actually applied the same criteria to its fellows on the right. I refer in particular to Henry Kissinger, who was published only a few days before you in a piece (ironically) on what to do about the quagmire in Iraq (‘Put Iraq Peace Onus On The World’, July 10). I say ironically since this is a man who  played a key and deliberate role in sabotaging the 1968 Paris Peace negotiations on Vietnam merely so that Richard Nixon could beat the Democrats in the US elections. Kissinger then proceeded to extend and escalate the war for another four years with the illegal and indiscriminate bombings of neutral Cambodia and Laos, causing the deaths of over a million civilians and the evacuation of millions more refugees. And then only to accept the same peace conditions as proposed in ’68 in 1973. Now he’s offering advise on Iraq? Excuse me for being skeptical.

Indeed, Kissinger is arguably the figure par excellence who should be tried as a war criminal. His personal planning in the kidnap and murder of General Schneider in Chile, his collusion with Pinochet’s political repression, the illegal bombings of Laos and Cambodia – these are just a few of the war crimes he has committed. That your paper would allow space for such a man severely compromises its integrity, especially when it sees fit to chastise leftists for ignoring human rights violations of its figureheads that very same week.

I should also point out that the above allegations are not wild conspiracy theories or leftist hysteria but historical facts, carefully and rigorously documented in Christopher Hitchens’ book ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’. I assume that The Australian respects Hitchens’ political expertise since he features in the very same weekend edition as yourself (‘Mad Medicos Opt For A Sinister Cure’, July 14-15).

Perhaps you should also try and put Henry Kissinger’s face on a poster ad. See if it works. And if not, ask, what am I missing?
 
David Marin-Guzman

The latest idea may be populist but it’s also popular, Rudd is shifting the argument from the abstract of the economy and economic management – the Government’s undoubted strength – to the details of everyday life. And, he’s putting a proposition everyone is going to agree with. Who doesn’t say their old school isn’t as good as it once was, who doesn’t say crime is getting worse and who doesn’t think food prices are rising?

The policy has received encouraging responses from the media and voters but it strikes me as worryingly similar to the kind of consumer politics first introduced by Bill Clinton. Back in 1996, on the advise of campaign strategist Dick Morris, Clinton shifted his re-election campaign away from the big issues – tax and health and welfare – to concentrate on the comparatively tiny concerns of key marginal focus groups. Clinton then shaped his whole campaign around bite-sized pieces of legislation, most famously a digital device that would screen out pornography on the TV, appealing to the public’s individual desires and feelings and, as a consequence, winning an election he was set to lose.

This kind of consumer politics always seems less about liberating people or encouraging their participation than about developing new ways of satiating and controlling them. Political leaders end up as little more than economic managers, utilising focus group techniques that were previously the sole interest of business. (See more in Adam Curtis’ brilliant documentary The Century of Self).

Since the rise of the New Left in Britain and the US, Australian Labor has yet to have its moment in power, so it’s still unclear what side of the fence it sits. I doubt Rudd will descend to the cloying depths of Clinton and Blair but his latest proposal could be a telling sign as to how Labor thinks it should address economic issues: bite-sized, personal politics that show Kevin Cares but in the end change little.

 And yesterday, Hartcher seemed likewise fascinated as to what attracted voters to Rudd:

And as Australia’s most popular opposition leader in the 35-year history of the ACNielsen poll strolled the Westfield Garden City mall in Brisbane’s working-class Upper Mount Gravatt, he was approached by a large woman with warm wishes.

“Mr Rudd, I believe you are going to be our next prime minister,” she told him. The Labor leader asked her why she thought so. “It’s just your charisma,” she replied.

Rudd and some of his entourage of staff members laughed. “That’s the least believable thing I’ve heard all day,” was his rejoinder. He can be self-deprecating, but this time he was also being realistic.

Rudd is not a charismatic figure. He does not radiate the personal magic, the captivating aura of a John F. Kennedy or a Mahatma Gandhi or even a Hawke in his political prime. He does not achieve the Harvard anthropologist Charles Lindholm’s definition: “Charisma is, above all, a relationship, a mutual mingling of the inner selves of leader and follower.”

Dame Edna Everage captures the impression that we have of Rudd’s inner self: “Do we want a prime minister who looks like a dentist?” she asks audiences in her show, Back with a Vengeance, to much laughter. Her other line on Rudd is to wonder whether Australia is ready for a leader named Kevin.

But Rudd certainly has something. His poll numbers are not only stratospheric, they are persistently so….

….What is it about Kevin, or St Kevin as some have called him in recognition of his halo of popular approval? And is it enough to take power from Australia’s second-longest-serving prime minister at the election expected within five months?

 My concern is different to Hartcher. I’m not worried about whether Rudd’s charisma will be enough to win him the election. I’m worried about whether his charisma is really masking a paucity of ideas, vision and policy. I’m worried at how much Rudd’s evocation of stability and strength may merely mask the usual boring and conservative views.

 This leads on from some of the concerns in my previous post. When it comes to the crunch, Rudd is being vague or even retractive on the things that matter (IR and climate change specifics) and strong and forceful on the things that don’t matter – that is, the things that make him less distinctive (indifference to unions, economic conservatism). In this context, Rudd’s image of strength is not that of political courage or will but a forceful insistence on remaining the same – the primary indicator of weakness. If Rudd’s ‘charisma’ is going to help him win the election it’ll be because it functions as the ‘empty signifier’ able to safely contain the multitude of interests.

 With the election only five months away, Rudd needs to invoke a radical break from the current political dialetic. Bring back politics proper in all its singular, divisive glory. If not, he’s going to find himself increasingly ripe for Howard’s political synthesis.

The media gushed over Costello all week while Howard cautiously soaked up the leftovers. Meanwhile, Rudd was painted as an old fashioned union monger over his IR policy and his dull budget reply sounded too similar to Costello’s to be noticable. The honeymoon period seemed to have ended for Labor. With the budget, Howard had taken away some of the serious issue advantage Labor had on education and industrial relations (the ‘battlers’ clause’) and seemed to have squeezed Rudd’s balls in the process. Rudd appeared tired, backing down (in terms of IR) and lacking big inspiring policy ideas.

Peter Hartcher wrote an interesting feature on what Howard is doing here through a structure of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. He sees Howard as not just offering an anti-thesis to Rudd’s thesis but also synthesising Labor policy, adopting its issues but returning them to an economic context. Labor’s opposition thus becomes posited through the economic coordinates that Howard sets. One of the quotes from Costello that I’ve seen in the media lately has been “I’ve always found that if you get the economics right, the politics will follow.” This is the Liberal strategy all over – seeing politics from the bracket of economics. Global warming becomes not about environmental management but about who can better manage the economy in a time of crisis. Industrial Relations is not about workers’ rights and families but about business and productivity. And so forth.

Rudd’s problem is that he’s beginning to show signs of taking on Howard’s assumptions, playing his game. Recently, he’s had a TV ad about how he’s an economic conservative. As Hartcher points out, it’s an ad about how boring he is. ABC Insiders last week said that this was Rudd’s attempt to neutralise the issue of the economy by minimising the points of difference. But this is merely the trap Howard sets. (To extend my Lord of the Rings analogy from the previous post, it’s like Boromir wanting to use the Ring to save Gondor – it can’t be done!) If you’re going to make the election about economic conservatism why not just go with the one who’s been doing it longer and better? If Rudd continues on like this, Labor’s early advantage of differentiation will quickly be reduced. And most importantly, Rudd will lose his image of vision and freshness.

So, with all this in mind, I predicted a fairly big hit in the polls, with Liberals closing the gap quite substantially. The result was completely the opposite, with Labor up two points and Liberals actually down one point in first party preferences. Keeping in mind that it’s still too soon to measure the repercussions of the budget and Howard’s strategy of synthesis, what is going on here?

The problem as I see it is that, whatever the response to the budget, Howard still has not overcome his image problem, which has become fundamental. While all the good press last week seemed to be on Costello, Costello aint the leader. Jonny Howard is. And Howard now has the strong taint of an old man who is out of touch. I truly think the tide has turned in this regard. Anything he does from now until election will not hide the truth that is becoming blatently apparent – Australia is bored and Howard is sterile. Howard may be a tricky, clever politician but Australians already know this and are all too familiar with his tricks and manouvres after ten years – they’re beginning to lose their affectiveness. Voting decisions are pretty superficial in the end and I think that ten seconds before the ballot box, Rudd is still going to be the best alternative we’ve been given so far.

The beautiful irony for Rudd is that, after such a long period, comfort and stability begin to generate their own fear and insecurity. After ten years, change is actually going to seem like the sensible and safe option.

Firstly, Hartcher opens with a method polling companies use to gauge politicians’ images. It’s called the ‘projective technique’ and has had a long history of being applied in market research in order to discover consumers’ ‘deeper, unarticulated feelings’ beneath their surface responses. It was recently used in the 2004 US election, where voters were asked, if the electoral candidates were cars, what make would they be? Bush got the Ford – old, reliable, American. Kerry got BMW – expensive, elitist, European. In Australia, we ask what kind of dog our politicians remind us of. So Howard got bulldog or fox terrier. In other words, the worker dog – small, agile, aggressive. Costello got labrador or cocker spaniel – the kind of dog you’d like to play in your backyard but not the kind you want to protect your house and family. Beazley, then Labor leader at time of poll, got Saint Bernard. Likeable and loveable but also big, cuddly, slow and dopey. Rudd wasn’t dog polled but Hartcher predicts that he would be more terrier than labrador.

But look, let’s be truthful. What we really want to hear is what kind of hobbit Howard and Rudd would be. There’s a great quote in Hartcher’s essay that he takes from Labor’s national secretary Tim Gartrell, who described Howard as “a 21st Century cross between Richard Nixon and Gollum from Lord of the Rings“.

Ouch. (Personally I always thought more Mr Garrison from South Park).

But then what does that make Kevin Rudd? Hans Blix crossed with Frodo Baggins?

But back to my point (yeah Dude, what was your point?). My point, or rather Hartcher’s point, is about first impressions. Hartcher says that the two most important issues that will win the election are the economy and national security (or ‘Saruman’ and ‘Sauron’ respectively). These are the two issues Liberals are associated with image wise and the ones Howard has come out explicitly to emphasise in this year’s election. If Labor cannot first gain credibility on these two points they cannot win.

But Hartcher does give good marks to Rudd so far. Although it is going to be very tough (if not impossible) to gain ground on the economy he credits Labor for bringing Keating (or ‘Gandalf’) back into the fold after he was all but ignored in the last election. This way Labor can claim some credit for the economy through Keating’s vital economic reforms. Hartcher also predicts interest rates to be less of a scare button than the last election. This is because the ‘notorious 17 per cent’ criticism or the ‘yeah but yours were 17′ defence (what Hartcher calls the ‘Spinal Tap’ defence – ‘Yeah, but this one goes to 11′) were attacked last year when Wayne Swan reminded the Liberals that interests rates actually hit 21 per cent in 1982 under then Liberal treasurer John Howard.

In regards to national security, Hartcher is less optimistic. He believes that Labor can only gain the edge on this issue if it is given to them by ‘chronic misjudgment’ from Howard. I’m a little less skeptical. The Iraq disaster and Howard’s partisan criticism of the US Democrats earlier this year already seem to be major mistakes on Howard’s part. What more does he have to do?

The final (more interesting) point is that climate change (or ‘Treebeard’) has, almost out of nowhere, become the third critical issue. And this time Labor has the edge, mostly due to Howard’s ignorance of its electoral importance up until now. However, Hartcher still concedes that Howard might turn it around on Labor by emphasising that good economic management is the key to solving climate change (through investment in green technology, the $10bn Murray Darling water scheme, balancing the economic needs with climate compromises etc).

All in all, an excellent essay. There’s a lot here that would benefit Rudd, especially how he’s perceived among the electorate and the ways in which Howard preys on our fears and anxieties. Now the only question I have is what would Frodo do?

But the big political vulnerability is the financing. By funding the plan with assets from the Future Fund, Rudd has given the Government a political opening. As Peter Costello thundered yesterday, Rudd Labor is “stealing from the future”.

Rudd is now open to the charge that he will not observe the principle of setting aside today’s assets for tomorrow’s liabilities. And that makes his whole approach to fiscal policy open to attack. Already last night the Liberal Party was mailing out attack ads headed “Labor already raiding the Future Fund”.

It’s another cautious article from Hartcher but I’m just not convinced we’re looking at a mistep on Labor’s part – ALP strategy has been played more intelligently than that.

The battlelines being drawn in this upcoming election are looking more and more to be youth and vision vs steadfastness and stability (the strengths of Labor and Liberal respectively). Rudd’s speech yesterday was a deliberate attempt to contrast Labor ‘vision’ with Liberal ‘stability’ vis a vis Howard’s Iraq speech, which asserted steadfastness but for a failed war that began four years ago. Against the disaster that is Iraq, Liberal stability becomes more stubborn conservatism than wisdom and responsibility. It becomes a strength stigmatised by lack of vision.

This is why Costello’s response that Labor was raiding the Future Fund can only sound shrill and hysterical. Asked by AM this morning why $2.7bn of $50bn of Future Funds shouldn’t be used for the national interest, especially considering that the government’s own broadband advisory board predicted benefits of $12-30 billion a year, the treasurer’s response soon became the reductive and obstinate “Because this is taking money out of the fund, it’s taking money out of the fund.” Costello appeared more willing to take cheap economic shots at Labor than to seriously discuss policy alternatives. Is this a case of economic tunnel vision on the part of Costello? Instead of problems arising out of a deeper look at Rudd’s policy implementation (as Hartcher claims), it could well be the other way around. If this story continues, it may bring into focus the viability of the Future Fund itself and its high opportunity cost of not investing in targeted and economically productive projects.

In regards to the broadband problem, Costello drew a similarly stunted conclusion. His only reported alternative was that it be handled by the private sector – an already failed option, as seen by the deadlock between Telstra and Optus’ broadband plans and the high cost of capital needed for the project.

Again, in the light of the context of Rudd’s speech, this stability Costello flaunts can only be seen as lacking vision and wisdom.

After ten years of a stable Liberal marriage, the question for the electorate is not going to be stability so much as it will be the question of where are we going? What kind of future are we creating with our prosperity? At the risk of sounding like a Labor spokesman, this is going to be an election based on vision. Vision for an exit strategy in Iraq, vision for economic reform and productivity, vision for action on climate change. Until Howard recognises this, it’s going to hover like an empty question mark over his head.

And I should mention that on top of all this, Rudd has not only small and big business behind him, including Optus and Telstra, but he also has the enthusiasm and support of big media owners Rupert Murdoch, James Packer and Fairfax’s David Kirk. On this issue, Rudd is going to have a media chorus in his corner. Just look at The Australian’s leading story:

“Public super ‘covered’ in $4.7bn super plan”

…I don’t know the processes that he went through in his mind on this issue, all I know is that he had an obligation and, after all, the Liberal Party is the party of personal responsibility. We pride ourselves on personal responsibility. He had a personal responsibility as a Senator, quite apart from his obligations as a minister, to make sure that the paperwork was in order.

Did Howard just link Santoro’s case inadvertantly to the Liberal party’s own ideology? And by doing so, revealing it as an example of the failure of this ideology? Personal responsibility has been the guiding principle for the individualism, privitisation and liberal market policies of the Liberals. Yet a lot of the scandals that have rocked the party over the last few weeks – Santoro’s failed disclosures, fraud investigation of Queensland Liberal MPs, Amanda Vanstone’s misuse of $70,000 of public funds to learn Mandarin – have been evidence of the demise of personal responsibility. An indication, not to mention consequence, of the lack of proper oversight and regulation.

Even right wing ideologue Gerard Henderson seems to have noticed the slack in his latest column:

In fact Santoro’s dismissal provides an example of what is wrong with the Liberal Party at the federal, state and territory levels. Despite constant warnings from Howard, there is an evident amount of indiscipline and self-indulgence in federal Coalition ranks.

Coupled with unregistered lobbyist influence on both sides of parliament, we’re looking at that old adage of stricter transparency and accountability mechanisms in government. At present, all we have is the Prime Ministerial Code of Conduct, which, in the hands of the party leader, has often been compromised in the interests of the party. Personal responsibility may be a worthy ideal but, as an assurance of accountability, it’s dubious at best.