Learning from his opponent

John Howard has shown Kevin Rudd how to go with the flow, writes David Burchell WHAT should we make of the recent opinion polls which appear to show Kevin Rudd eclipsing John Howard as preferred PM? The unexciting answer, I think, is: not too little, but certainly not too much. The polls should remind us that Mr Howard’s aura of invincibility has a fragile element to it. Many Australians find him a reassuring presence on the national stage. But that’s not to say that they’re enthusiastic “Howardists” - whatever that might mean. Much of the obsessive preoccupation with the person of the PM in recent years - both in the press gallery and in the so-called chattering classes - has been little more than hot air in this respect. In point of fact, the PM is neither capable of whistling to the electorate as if they’re dogs, nor of shaping the public debate to suit his fancy. The currently fashionable view that the federal government can work to actively “exclude” views from public debate - rather like the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in years gone by - is mostly just an alibi for the failure of the individuals concerned to intervene in the debates that matter in a manner that ordinary Australians can relate to and understand. Mr Howard is at once less complex and less Machiavellian than opponents and supporters alike would have him appear. Many of his supposed political master-strokes of the recent past - such as the controversy over the Tampa, the asylum-seeker controversy that followed it, or the supposed “race” debates of the last couple of years - have been political gifts, offered up to him by chance, or by his opponents. As the old US sporting homily has it: “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Howard’s biggest political gift has been his uncomplicated capacity for recognising a spot of political luck when it appears, and then utilising it as best he’s able. In the 1980s in Britain the Labour opposition became equally obsessive in their preoccupation with the person of Margaret Thatcher. They effectively transferred onto the person of Thatcher a range of changes in British society and economy that would in all likelihood have taken place without her - albeit perhaps a little more slowly. When it became clear that these changes were indeed permanent, the same people responded not by attempting to understand the new realities, but rather by transferring their hatred to her Labour successor, Tony Blair. Like the old saw about the Bourbon monarchy, they both forgot nothing and learned nothing. On the whole, Mr Howard’s prime ministership has not been marked by deeply felt “commitment” issues. He’s had moments of illumination - over gun-control, for instance, or “practical reconciliation” - but by and large he’s been content to go with the flow of the times. Most of the statements that most infuriated his intellectual opponents - on border protection or home-grown Islamism - were already the stuff of ordinary conversation in pubs and shopping-centres long before Howard aired them. If the commentators got out a bit more, they would have known this already. Mr Howard’s problem now - as a man who feels most comfortable when he’s going with the flow of the times - is not that he’s lost his touch, as such, but rather that the current of the times seems to be flowing increasingly against him. Climate change is not fiction, after all. Present-day Iraq is indeed a disaster zone. Our economic success is indeed more to do with the commodities boom than any grand economic vision - and this is starting to become visible in our economic performance. By contrast, Mr Rudd looks prudent and astute, almost without having to do or say anything much. He can flow with the current, as it were, and still give the impression the current is flowing with him. As opposition leader Mark Latham sought to reshape the times by sheer force of political will. Like some kind of ancient Greek hero, he imagined himself tossing around boulders in order to remake the political landscape. The ancients liked to say “The gods play with us for our sport.” In the best Homeric fashion, the gods lifted Latham up only to knock him down. Kevin Rudd is performing in a completely different human drama. He is not a charismatic man or a political visionary. His efforts at political philosophy are unpersuasive. Unlike Latham or Keating, he doesn’t command conviction that he has fire in his belly when he speaks. But he’s clearly a shrewd and patient political observer. And unlike some of his more high-profile contemporaries he has enough control over his own ego to be able to recognise both his opponents’ weaknesses and strengths. He’s observed that Howard’s political appeal derives in good measure from his ability to acknowledge social anxieties without overplaying them excessively. While intellectuals may rail against this, it’s not obvious that it’s an exclusively conservative trait. Indeed, historically social democratic parties saw themselves as the agents of social compromise and reassurance, rather than just trumpeting the virtues of the new. And so Labor too is beginning to acknowledge things it’s previously hidden from - such as the problem of teaching standards in state schools, or the need for multiculturalism to recognise the value of integration as well as diverse identities. No doubt soon enough conservatives and radical intellectuals alike will begin to complain that Rudd is stealing Howard’s clothes. Yet Rudd is arguably doing no more than Tony Blair did in Britain in the late 1990s - tacitly acknowledging and learning from the strengths of his opponents. To the extent that he’s successful, we may start to hear the PM’s voice taking an increasingly shrill and even extreme-sounding tone. If and when that happens - and at the moment it’s a possibility rather than a certainty - it will be a sure sign that the tide really has turned. • David Burchell teaches in Humanities at the University of Western Sydney, and is associate editor of APO. Photo: Kevin Rudd talks to primary school children at Campbell primary school in Canberra, Wednesday 28 February 2007. AAP Image/Alan Porrit