John Howard and the art of democratic leadership.

HOW ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND the significance of the "Howard years" and his place in Australian history? How are we to look beyond parochial concern with the day-to-day workings of politics and attempt to get a sense of the wider significance of the last decade? This is not an easy task for a number of reasons, but one still worth attempting. The first difficulty is that we are still so close to the events of the Howard years that it is not easy to achieve the required perspective.

The second difficulty is that, as a substitute for intelligent analysis, Howard has been regularly vilified by many in the media and academia. I'll give a couple of examples. Guy Rundle refused to recognise Howard as a human being, describing him as "the short-trousered boy-man striding through a series of foreign capitals like Tintin". Donald Home was worse. He described Howard as:

 
   a political freak, not emerging from the realities of 
   his own party (in fact a disgrace to both its liberal 
   and its pragmatic traditions) and not emerging from 
   the political system as a whole or from dominant 
   trends among his fellow citizens, but dropping 
   down on us like an apparition from the Dreamtime 
   Fifties ... 

and later as "one of those people who, in a fly-infested part of the country, fidgets around and won't let the flies settle on his back". Or consider this offering from Margo Kingston:

 
   [John Howard] is not a liberal, or a Liberal, or a 
   conservative, or a Conservative ... he's part of an 
   ideological wrecking gang made up of radical-populist 
   economic opportunists, one which long 
   ago decided that robust liberal democracy was an 
   impediment to the real elites--Big Business and 
   Big Media--that sponsor them, rather than an 
   essential complement to and underwriter of market 
   capitalism. 

The real problem with these sorts of statement is that they are driven by the moral vanity of their authors and are more concerned with demonstrating the moral virtue of their authors than with providing a true picture of Howard. To put it mildly, they are extremely unhelpful for anyone seeking an analytical framework for understanding the Howard years. One reason is that they reduce the study of politics to a moralistic discourse in which causes are sought as character flaws. Howard is viewed as a monster just awaiting an opportunity to display his real nature. This is very similar to a classical Roman view of character, and an example is Sallust's portrayal of the character of Cataline. For Howard, like Cataline, actions are just revelations of their depraved natures.

The second reason is that it turns politics into a Punch-and-Judy show in which the supposedly intelligent and sophisticated spectators are called on to boo and cheer accordingly. The third reason is that it encourages a simplistic understanding of politics. Robert Manne has expressed the extraordinarily simplistic view that a change of government would transform Australia from "the closing of minds, the hardening of hearts" to "a more liberal, generous and humane political culture". Its capacity to explain the nature of politics and the way in which Australian politics has been developing over the past few years is extremely limited. This is largely because of what David Martin has called the "special licence" of academic and media commentators and their capacity to ask questions "without needing to answer them" and "demand apologies without ever having to give them". Put simply, they have power without responsibility and are unable to understand the sometimes awful responsibility that comes with authority.