Someone put the question the other day “What is the purpose of the Obama visit?”
I don’t recall the answer but it will provide an opportunity to compare and contrast the way that two men who swept into power on the back of landslide victories have visibly lost the plot in record time.
Of course it was apparent before they took office that they would be on the short list of the worst PMs/Presidents ever. This situation would be amusing except that people are being hurt and the fundamentals of good governance will remain under threat for some time to come (and that is an optimistic scenario).
The most disturbing aspect of the situation is the way that the mainstream media in both the US and and Australia have played favorites and largely given up on the task of feeding straight news and commentary.
Progressive/left leaning intellectuals have done the same.
When the disastrous records of Obama and Rudd are written up by the historians the working media and the left-leaning intelligentsia will have to take large share of the blame.
In the US the republicans have thrown everything including the kitchen sink at Obama, including rumours, fabrications and out right lies. It seems to have paid off but I doubt if the alternative would be any better.
rog
22 Feb 10 at 7:41 am
Do you support the classical liberal agenda as an alternative?
Rafe
22 Feb 10 at 8:16 am
I think it very hard to compare the two. They had very different situations in coming to office.
Obama inherited an economy in freefall and with public finances in not much better shape following the rampant spending of the Bush years. He also lacks the power that an executive has in the Westminster system.
Rudd inherited a strong economy, with strong public finances and has proceeded to waste billions of dollars and, in general, over-promised and under-delivered in so many areas.
I think it’s pretty clear Rudd is a dud. It’ll probably take a little longer to assess Obama.
Matt C
22 Feb 10 at 8:24 am
The two have little in common as Matt C points out. Making poor comparisons between Australian and US politics is something that far too many people do. When the Howard government was called ‘neo-conservative’ and ‘neo-liberal’ by various comentators it was just as silly as comparing Obama and Rudd.
The visit will probably give Rudd a boost in an electon year. Whatever you think of the guy he is a very cunning politician, this is another example of him working things to his advantage.
Karl Kessel
22 Feb 10 at 8:58 am
“When the disastrous records of Obama and Rudd are written up by the historians the working media and the left-leaning intelligentsia will have to take large share of the blame.”
Except that it’s exactly these people that will be writing the history books, teaching in history departments and producing the documentaries.
Rod
22 Feb 10 at 10:08 am
Helpful list of Rudd disasters, heads up from JC
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/politics/how-rudd-the-dud-dropped-australia-in-the-alphabet-soup-20100221-ontz.html
Actually it was easier to see that Obama was a dud in advance because at least Kevin campaigned as a fiscal conservative.
Rafe
22 Feb 10 at 10:38 am
So what are the important and interesting differences?
On similarities, they both made massive promises that they have failed to deliver (just as well in many cases).
You have a good point Rod, but I am hoping for some even handed historians. With the support of the blogosphere it would only take a handful to get the job done.
Rafe
22 Feb 10 at 1:14 pm
Some differences:
* Obama has not been able to implement policies due to political resistance. With the exception of the ETS, Rudd’s successfully implemented his agenda.
* Obama had dreamy, unattainable ideas, like comprehensive health reform. Rudd’s visionary stuff was more or less achievable (the apology, the education revolution).
* Obama made astoundingly nepotistic and far-left ideological appointments all up and down the line. Some are now emerging with Rudd, such as Kaiser, but it hasn’t been to the same degree.
* Obama spent more money, in absolute and proportional terms, than Rudd, on wasted endeavors such as stimuli and bailouts.
.
a similarity:
both promised a new era of mending reputations in foreign policy, yet both have made serious foreign policy errors and damaged important relationships.
.
both have failed to end wars that they promised to end.
.
Overall scorecard: Obama is worse than Rudd.
daddy dave
22 Feb 10 at 2:07 pm
Dads.
Rudd got an economy that was the equivalent of a bunch of super models in the same room. It was the closest thing to heaven on earth in terms of what he inherited.
Rudd’s completely fucked that.
Rudd also speaks in that annoying jargon filled public service lingo that sends most people up the wall and rushing for the channel remote. Obamnation says silly things, bit he isn’t as dull as Rudd on that score…
“In due season”! Fme.
I think it would be hard to say which is worse.
JC
22 Feb 10 at 2:14 pm
In line with most people here, I think Rudd and Obama are difficult to compare.
On Obama – he’s certainly been a mediocre president. He hasn’t been able to achieve any major reforms. He’s still blundering away in Afghanistan. I’m not sure where Dave is coming from with respect to ‘serious foreign policy errors’, however. The main thing, however, is that Obama was preceded by a president who was not merely mediocre, but horrific. No recent president has instigated an orgy of bloodshed on a scale like Bush’s Iraq, to say nothing of the orgy of wealth transfer that accompanied it. This is in addition to Bush’s cronyism, and crackdowns on civil liberties. There’s really nothing good to say about Dubya. Obama would have to invade Iran to be anywhere near as terrible.
Rudd is a different kettle of fish. I think there’s a tendency to overstate Howard’s supposed achievements, particularly on the economic front. Rudd has continued in the same vein as Howard, in many ways. In other words, he’s achieved very little.
The key factor determining how Rudd will be judged will be his response to the GFC. In late 2008 and early 2009, people all over Australia were genuinely concerned that we’d suffer a major recession and a crash in our bloated housing market. Whatever we think of Rudd’s policies – and I think there is much to criticise – this worst case scenario was avoided. It’s all very well to get worked up about debt. In the abstract, I’m sure most voters are also against government. But given the choice of some foreign debt, versus being unemployed, and losing a home or having negative equity, voters will choose the former each and every time, which is why the debt issue is important to right economists, and basically nobody else. Even the opposition never once made a serious argument against the stimulus. Sure, they said the spending should be less, and perhaps spent differently, but they didn’t give specifics, and they never said that stimulus, in principle, was a bad idea.
Of course, if we had a double-dip recession and the housing market did crash, that would paint Rudd’s economic performance in a very different light, since the government would be hard-pressed to come up with stimulus package Mk II. For now, though, Rudd’s bland, managerial style has not generated any scandals that are likely to see him ousted, and he has completed the fundamental task for which he was elected (i.e. abolish Workchoices).
THR
22 Feb 10 at 2:38 pm
THR is right. He was elected on an anti Work Choices platform. Still a difficult guy to de-perch even he’s on the nose lately.
It might just happen though if Wong keeps on calling anyone who can read Phil Jones and think for themselves as idiots.
Semi Regular Libertarian
22 Feb 10 at 2:43 pm
THR
I am not sure I would put too much stead in the electorate’s gratitude that Rudd saved us from a major recession. First of all, I am not even remotely persuaded that people even feared such a major recession, or if they did, not for very long.
As I argued elsewhere people respond much more – and remember – what actually happened, not what some hysterics feared might. So, they did remember “the recession we had to have” because it, er, really did happen.
It’s all about ‘what have you done for me, lately.’ Australians are a pretty skeptical lot, and not too disposed to political volatility. If the boat’s not rocking, I can’t see why anybody who voted Labor last time would switch to the coalition this time.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 2:59 pm
But the boat is rocking, whilst it brings in many more illegal immigrants who have been put in danger of their lives due to the idiotic policy of the Rudd government.
Rococo Liberal
22 Feb 10 at 3:05 pm
First of all, I am not even remotely persuaded that people even feared such a major recession, or if they did, not for very long.
A couple of points. I think that the media from Sept ’08 started screaming about a ‘crisis’. The immediate reason for this was to create an ‘emergency’ environment that would allow the bailouts to pass. However, the doom and gloom prophecy continued well into 2009.
How much Australians took the scare-mongering on board is an open question. As isolated as we are, many Australians will have friends and relatives in the US, UK, Ireland, Italy, etc, and will be well aware that the GFC was not merely a media beat-up in those countries.
Finally, the opposition really had no alternative economic policy. Poor Joe Hockey was reduced to fulminating about minor details here and there, rather than articulating anything of substance.
I agree that few people will change votes, barring a major scandal or economic meltdown. However, you never know how people will vote in those far-flung parts of Australia (i.e. not Melbourne, Sydney, or Brisbane) that tend to decide elections.
THR
22 Feb 10 at 3:08 pm
THR
You and I clearly have different ideas of ‘docile.’ To me, the ‘docile’ ones are the rusted-on Useful Idiots in the safe-as-houses inner urban seats.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 3:14 pm
PP
I don’t know how much form you have in condemning ‘safe as houses’ inner urban people when you not only voted for the current dunce but have said you’d still vote for the idiot again
jtfsoon
22 Feb 10 at 3:15 pm
RL
The number of people who would place any, let alone much, significance to events like that would be somewhere between 34 and 46.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 3:15 pm
it could be worse statman they could be catallaxian crackpots who got the GFC so badly wrong they still haven’t come to terms with it.
Of course people who allowed the ALP to remain in office in NSW at the last election shouldn’t be calling anyone names
Butterfield, Bloomfield & Bishop
22 Feb 10 at 3:19 pm
I didn’t mention docile.
In the end, the House of Reps boils down to a two-horse race after preferences (with a couple of seats being the exception).
This is why a lot of the pseudo-controversies of recent months – asylum seekers, environment policy etc. – are going to make a scrap of difference.
The ‘human rights’ and pro-AGW crowd were never going to vote/preference the Coalition. Likewise, the folks who are really worked up about asylum seekers sailing here, or who think AGW is a conspiracy for world government are unlikely to start voting/preferencing the ALP.
The last election was also run (very roughly) on class lines, at least, in Melbourne and Sydney. Despite the myth of ‘Howard’s Battlers’, the workers and immigrants tend to live in seats that are very safe ALP territory. Instead of reaching out to them, Abbott is instead giving a nod and a wink to rusted-on right-wingers who probably already live in prime Tory territory.
THR
22 Feb 10 at 3:20 pm
jtfsoon
Firstly, I vote for the party as a whole. Secondly, I am a swinging voter. Thirdly, he is not a ‘dunce.’ Fourthly, I am no fan of political volatility and thus require a good, or at least some, reason to change my vote from Labor to Liberal, after only one term; as yet I have not seen even one reason to change.
True, I no longer have any patience for their huge spending on white elephants. This issue might turn into a vote changer. It might come later. We’ll see.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 3:20 pm
THR
Jesus, you didn’t mention ‘docile’ did you? I think it might be time for me to visit the optometrist!
One thing I am looking forward to is the spectacle of this looming ‘family values’ battle, with Abbott’s quite aggressive assault remaking his ‘Catholic wowser’ image into an almost Hawkeian macho posturing stud. OTOH, we have Gillard’s deft dumping of an information-soaked data base on our kids’ education, that could keep us occupied or ‘distracted’ for quite a while.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 3:54 pm
Peter:
Here’s my bet. I think Abbott will go all out to imply he isn’t what is commonly suggested he is.
He’ll sell himself as a good pair of safe hands that will try to undo all the damage these doofuses have caused.
I bet that next time a catholic question comes his way, he’ll suggest his religion is a private matter.
JC
22 Feb 10 at 4:02 pm
THR
I think the Howard Battler’s were/are more the – excuse the gruesome sociology – “upper” working class and lower middle class. People who through a mixture of luck, ambition, and sweat have moved demonstrably ‘above’ the circumstances of their parents.
Lots of these would naturally be small business people, sole traders, sub-contractors, etc. Those parts of the ‘lower’ SES groups who were actually able to get on to the property tread-mill.
I am not even sure how many people would still fall into the ‘working class’ image that was once Labor’s base – blue collar, manual worker, little education.
Also, on the immigrant front, the idea that recent immigrants are part of Labor’s ‘base’ must surely be wrong. Sure, from the 1950s until the early 1990s, there probably were some immigrant groups rusted on to Labor – Greeks and Italians were probably natural haters of any whiff of ‘right wing’, and those countries also had very strong socialist/left traditions, which they could have brought here. Then Whitlam’s explicit rejection of Asian ‘Vietnamese Botls.’
But then Fraser let the Asians in, and then the Lebanese. Hawkeating made the Lebanese rusted-on Labor and encouraged their extended families to emigrate here, while secretly locking up Asians in the desert. But then I suppose when Pauline Hanson came along, and Howard did not make a noise against her, maybe those Asians went to Labor.
But since 1996, Howard completely changed the ethnic mix and focus on education and skills. I am not sure those immigrants could be considered Labor’s ‘base.’
All in all, it seems pretty hard to say much conclusively at all about migrants and party loyalty.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 4:10 pm
JC
And I think he will be extremely successful in doing that, and in the process stun and outrage those inner city cultural left types who think their own bizarre revealing of themselves as wowsers and puritans who are uncomfortable around ‘sex,’ is representative of the electorate as a whole. Abbott will thus have neutralized a lot of what in the past might have been ammunition against him.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 4:13 pm
Both parties engage in a bit of ethnic branch-stacking, but the ALP are much better at it.
Lots of these would naturally be small business people, sole traders, sub-contractors, etc.
I would never define these people as working class, no matter how ‘blue-collar’ they appear. If you own or control the means of production, you are not working class. Hence the last election was, in a rough sense, fought along class lines.
THR
22 Feb 10 at 4:15 pm
“it could be worse statman they could be catallaxian crackpots who got the GFC so badly wrong they still haven’t come to terms with it.”
Yes Homer, are you inferring you “picked” the GFC?
Semi Regular Libertarian
22 Feb 10 at 4:15 pm
THR – so if you earn $149,999 and so does your partner working for an employer/employers then you’re “working class”?
Semi Regular Libertarian
22 Feb 10 at 4:17 pm
SRL:
He can’t even pick the only light switch in the room as the right one.
JC
22 Feb 10 at 4:17 pm
JC
Another point on which the Abbott-Haters are wrong is their mistaken insistence that the ‘Catholic’ thing is a given liability.
Don’t forget that over the past decade or so, a very large chunk of the nation’s parents have taken their children out of public schools and put them into – overwhelmingly Christian – private schools. Those kids, even though maybe not coming from a very religious family, are nevertheless not uncomfortable around religion, and do not regard it as the evil that secular baby-boomers do.
Also, most of our population growth has come from immigrants from societies much more religious/conservative than ours.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 4:17 pm
THR
That is why I emphasized their upward mobility from their parents station.
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 4:18 pm
THR – so if you earn $149,999 and so does your partner working for an employer/employers then you’re “working class”?
Income isn’t the only factor, but a worker is defined by his/her relation to the means of production. This excludes management types as far as I’m concerned. Which workers are earning $150k per year? Maybe miners, but that industry is an exception at the present time.
THR
22 Feb 10 at 4:20 pm
THR
Your definition of who objectively is ‘working class’ barely survived the 19th century, under whose conditions it was formulated. It has buckley’s of any meaning today. Consider, that the most significant owners of all our corporations are pension/super funds, whose ‘owners’ are the masses.
Still, I wonder how many Australians would satisfy your objective definition, and how many people would explicitly identify as ‘working class.’
Peter Patton
22 Feb 10 at 4:30 pm
What people ‘identify’ as only matters for those playing identity politics.
The fact is, the split between blue and white collar workers was part of a divide-and-rule strategy. Workers in retail, manufacturing, construction, as well as those in nursing, teaching, etc, are all workers. The self-employed tradie or small businessman is not. Far from being meaningless, there’s a genuine argument that something like Workchoices, for instance, divided voters precisely along these sorts of class lines.
Note also that I didn’t just refer to owning the means of production – I also referred to controlling it.
THR
22 Feb 10 at 4:35 pm
“Which workers are earning $150k per year? Maybe miners, but that industry is an exception at the present time.”
Doctors
Vets
Lawyers
Traders
Economists
etc
But we should steal the grain from that tight fisted electrician, he owns means of production!
This is very outdated thinking. Human, or knowledge capital has had a big part to play in economic research of firms, trade etc since the mid 1990s. Knowledge capitals by virtue of their education own part of the means of production. What are you going to do about? Make them pay for university in full?
Semi Regular Libertarian
22 Feb 10 at 4:37 pm