Well, apparently we are having a federal election campaign. And of course it will be another of those presidential style contests – Iron Mark versus Honest John. PM Howard and Labor leader Latham are stomping around opposite ends of the country selling their particular political products, mostly it seems to school kids. How elections bring out those otherwise forgotten people – kids and oldies, the ‘unproductive’ generations.
The Libs are still getting the range of new boy Latham, who has so far dodged easy targeting. The ALP strategy, on the other hand, is already clear.
Labor wants to juxtapose SMALL, OLD and TIRED Howard with BIG, YOUNG and ENERGETIC Latham. Hence the rhetoric about a big Australia in Latham’s ALP National Conference speech and plenty of video of Latham hanging out with school kids and jumping out of utes.
It’s not very subtle, but is politics ever so? And how does it stand up?
Latham – the embodiment of renovated Labor – is bigger and a whole generation younger than Howard. And his physical antics – like tackling taxi drivers and clobbering comedians with rubber bats – certainly speak to a certain amount of energy. So maybe Latham is big, young and energetic. The question is, is Australia?
And what about Howard, how does he fit Labor’s characterisation?
Howard has always been portrayed as physically small, although he is actually medium height and taller than Bob Hawke. But size is one of this country’s most obvious prejudices, and Howard’s ability to convey authority without this cheap reference is one of his achievements. As for old, he seems to be a robust 64-year-old, hardly old in these days. Indeed, the way things are going we’ll all be working on until our 80s to pay for our longer retirements. Howard has given no sign of losing any capacity to function, so quite frankly this is a misleading comparison if we are looking at this from a physical perspective.
The problem is that Howard has always embodied contradictory messages. His whole personality is that of a man of the 1950s, and in that sense he has always seemed old before his time. Yet this contrasts with the fact that he was an early adherent to the new neo-liberal economic orthodoxy that really first appeared in the 1970s. And so as ayoung politician he was in conflict with his preceding generation, epitomised by Malcolm Fraser. In this sense he was the generational challenger of his time.
When Labor adopted much of this neo-liberal position in office under Hawke, Howard’s economic fundamentalism lost its radical edge. Now neo-liberalism is no longer new and no longer so readily accepted, and so Howard’s keenness for market solutions no longer seems quite so authentic.
His staid conservatism, on the other hand, remains a core part of him. His support for the monarchy, his abject failure to recognise indigenous needs, his archaic social attitudes and his cultural xenophobia do paint him as a man no longer in touch. And as he periodically seems keen to stir up the culture wars with his various comments on things like political correctness, he is definitely vulnerable. In many ways, he is utterly out of touch with contemporary values and attitudes. After all, nearly three decades as a politician hardly qualifies you to speak as an average Aussie.
So, while much of this image making by Labor is simple spin, Howard is clearly weak in some areas. He has relied on his patriarchal authority to avoid discussing matters he chooses not to, so if Latham starts scoring points, forcing Howard to genuinely discuss issues outside his usual comfort zone, he will be in trouble.
Of course all this spin can easily backfire. SMALL, OLD and TIRED could easily become SMALL, OLD and TRIED, and BIG, YOUNG and ENERGETIC could become BIG, YOUNG AND ERRATIC.
So, the lesson for Labor is keep to the substance, because to live by spin can mean to die by spin, and unless Labor does something stupid, they will most likely win the next election for the right reasons.

The early indications that US politics was undergoing some kind of transformation, thanks to George Bush Jr, are diminishing as the selection of the Democrat presidential candidate proceeds. The argument was that Bush so polarised America (even many Republicans hate him) that it has stimulated US politics generally and the Democrats in particular.
The rise of outsider Howard Dean, thanks to fundraising and organisation done largely through the Internet, was seen as a sea change in politics. It sidelined the national Democrat organisation, mainly though its newfound capacity to raise money.
But now Dean looks dead in the water, his money is almost gone, and he has shifted more and more towards a position not much different to the other more mainstream candidates. In essence it appears that his Internet-based campaign could not translate into enough real world votes.
One of the problems for Dean, and presumably for other ‘left’ candidates (if Dean ever was actually ‘left’) was that the hatred of Bush turned into a strong desire to select the candidate who was most likely to beat him. So ‘electability’ has become the crucial, if not the only, issue. As a result, policies have been of minimal importance. In particular, Dean’s early opposition to the war in Iraq – which made him stand out and mobilised Democrat anger – became a decreasingly germane issue.
So, in essence, the most right-wing president in modern times will likely not generate a correspondingly left-wing Democrat, but at most a centrist one who supposedly maximises electoral appeal.
The problem is, even if this works (and Labor in Australia has just rejected this conciliatory approach by selecting the combative Mark Latham as leader) the US and the world face some very serious and intractable problems, mostly caused by underlying developments on a global scale – like climate change, new diseases, WMD proliferation, terrorism, economic volatility, etc. So the US, and the world, needs a president who can show real leadership. Business-as-usual American politics and the fence sitters it tends to promote (on the ‘left at least) is not appropriate to these strange times.
Oh well, maybe one of these Democrats will discover his own mind, and break out of the rut. It’s not like it’s not about time.

In his opening speech of the ALP federal convention, Mark Latham announced that he has appointed Lindsay Tanner, Shadow Minister for Telecommunications, as new Shadow Minister for Community Relationships. Tanner is in the ALP left – indeed he spoke strongly against the proposed asylum seeker policy put forward by Latham – and is perhaps Latham’s only real rival as creative intellectual within the ALP. Tanner has written widely on a host of issues and has a definite position on a number of important contemporary problems and possible solutions.
Latham has asked Tanner to turn his ideas into policy. This is a smart move, fully engaging one the best intellects in the party and showing Latham’s sound leadership instincts.
It is doubly shrewd because Tanners’ ideas, well thought out as they are, will resonate more easily within the ALP than some of Latham’s own, as he has presented them in the past. For his part, Latham will be busy as leader dealing with the ‘big picture’, but he will also of course retain the capacity to influence Tanner’s ideas.
Latham sees a re-invigoration of community relationships as an answer to a whole raft of problems, and way to erode the conservative position regarding the family/economy nexus, which is their ideological heartland. To place Tanner in charge demonstrates an intention to tackle the issue properly, and to fight the conservatives on their strengths.
The combination of Tanner’s two portfolios is interesting. Tanner knows that new information and communications technology is a big part of the changing nature of social relations, both positively and negatively. Indeed, many see the accelerating pace of change and capability of new ICT systems as being the key to reformulating social relations.
The basic idea is that ultimately beneficial social relations depend on effective communication. Neo-liberalism tends to privilege communications through market relations over other forms, such as multilateral dialogue, and has increasingly undermined other forms of social relations. The new ICT systems, like mobile phones and the Internet, if used properly open vast new possibilities for enhancing such communication. This is especially true in relation to youth, who, as anyone paying attention can see, are in some kind of real crisis.
Latham and Tanner: a potentially great team, and between them they can boast more brains than the entire Howard government front bench… No, bugger it – the whole of the Liberal parliamentary party.