Winning the Votes of Kings and Queens (Electioneering with Swagger): Campaign Notes, Part 1
“Election Day is always a wild and terrifying time for political junkies. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to it.”
– Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
As always, the Good Doctor was spot on the money. He was a gambler and an addict to politics and most importantly he was a winner. For political junkies with a penchant for the punt and a need to win, the campaign trail is the only place to be. Deep in the pancreas, jacked on cheap wine and rumour, yelling wildly as the stump rolls across the land. It is a wild ride and worth all the missed sleep and violent arguments and gut wrenching worry. The campaign trail is politics at its most volatile, the last great and wild frontier for the modern day gambler, the greatest show on earth.
When an election gets called, I tend to get a little sentimental. Memories of cake store fuck-ups and Knowledge Nation confusion fill my eyes and heart. I float back to a time when unionised employees chanted for John Howard and Labor staffers called out two-to-one or better for Howard on the eve of Election ’98. I sit smiling, imagining Nixon bombarding the electorate with old-time tricks that are these days considered highly inappropriate. The complete sadness that envelopes the dead-man walking. Hell, you can live on nothing but adrenaline and the scraps of the rumour mill for six weeks, the campaign scene is that exciting.
Four days in and the stupid are out, the fools now hopelessly exposed as the political professionals go through the traditional rituals of the stump and baby kisses and handing out the pork and factory hugs and silly stunts. The beginning of an election campaign always exposes the eccentric and the extreme and the dense and it is a real kick watching these fools humiliate themselves in a most public forum. The fringe of political relevance, a footnote in the history of political trivia, is all they can hope for. And it is all they will get. It happens every time and it is happening now. Nicole Cornes confidently promulgating Labor virtue in Boothby with unprecedented levels of inarticulation. Nola Marino, a no-name Liberal, impossibly putting the once blue ribbon Liberal seat of Forrest in danger. Misogynistic Ian Crossland, up in Leichhardt, doing the National Party and fifties social values proud with his modern day views on the role of women “around the Cape”. Labor candidate John Zigouras and his fascinating views on the seat of Mallee, a seat he happens to be contesting: “redneck country surrounded by neo-Nazi’s”. Pauline Hanson hiring a convicted pedophile to reinvigorate her long-dead political career. The names change but the low-rent stupidity of those who seek public office remains the same.
But these are all just cheap observations and fond recollections from a moist-eyed political professional about to embark on another Tour…
The real nut, however, is how the whole deal will go down. We all need to know who will write the history of the 2007 election, who will have their legacy slaughtered and their legend written, who will be cast to the wolves and who will be cradled with the keys.
Less than four weeks ago, the entire situation looked dire. Our fearless leader looked as doomed as the modern smoker. John Howard, after eleven years of unparalleled political and economic success, would be smacked around like an old jakey, roughed up and given something hard in the belly to remember the night by. The Australian public seemed ready to whip the Government into squalor and destitution for all many strange and fanciful reasons. With a perverted and arrogant attitude, everyone had gotten fat and then decided to shoot the cook.
Today, however, my faith is renewed. I am no longer cursing bets made on Howard glory or screaming at newsagents who sells me the Monday papers. I no longer find myself weeping on cloudy days or engaging in circumspect correspondence with various participants in the political scene. The depression and negativity of the last month has been beaten like a decrepit pugilist, replaced by an unbending faith and a thirst to gamble heavily on politics.
This will be the greatest victory of them all. This will be one for the true believers. These may be Keating’s words but they will be rattled out incessantly by conservatives and liberals and anybody right of union boss Kevin Rudd with only a touch of irony. Unlike the glorious wins of ’96 or ’98 or ’01 or ’04, and 1998 was entirely special for the absolute massacre of Labor bettors who paid for their confidence well into the new millennium, 2007 will be enjoyable in its own special way. Not only will Howard acolytes get the thrill of another election victory, there will be the joy of the underdog come-from-behind win and the subsequent celebrations that will be without domestication. Victory is good. Victory against the odds is better.
Particularly if you bet on it.
I have always had a penchant for German theatre and it was German theatre that came through for me when I needed it most. Locked down and overcome by what seemed an inevitable and costly shift to the left in this country, I came across three sentences that captured the upcoming election and provided the hope needed. “There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.” That was Bertolt Brecht and he knew a thing or two about plenty.
It was all so simple. Modern elections are decided by leadership and there is no more respected leader in these parts than John Winston Howard. Australia’s electoral system is as presidential as it has ever been and presidential elections are not a vote on policy or position but on leadership and the preference of one man over the other. Both Howard and Rudd recognize this and have set the structures of the campaign in place with Rudd calling for new leadership, Howard for the right leadership. Seemingly, we have a referendum on leadership.
This will be Rudd’s fatal mistake. He made the election about something he cannot possibly win at. It is like going up to Bobby Fisher with an agreement to play one game of anything and then choosing chess. It is madness.
For Labor to win, Rudd needed to run a scare campaign about health and education and war and peace and work conditions while portraying that he was strong, economically responsible and not in the pockets of the unions. Rudd has done none of that. He looked foolishly opportunistic when it came to punishment for the Bali Bombers, he is quite clearly being directed by the union movement in nearly all his positions and his attempt at kicking a football, and almost taking off the head of a toddler in the process, shows he is not particularly oozing masculine strength.
Your considerate author has faith that the Australian public will see this and hang Rudd out to dry like they did Beazley and Latham. Howard moves like a winner, like it is his natural right to win and rule. He rolls with a swagger and everybody loves a champion, particularly if they portray the public humility Howard does. Rudd, conversely, seems more hopeful than confident in his abilities, running a campaign more intent on not destroying his chances rather than improving them. It is certainly not the move of the alpha dog Australians so dearly love to govern.
If you have bet the Coalition, do not fear. This is going to be a lot closer than the polls suggest and infinitely closer than that strange old goat Malcolm Mackerras predicts. At this stage of the campaign, the election is there to be won and lost. Betting should be pick and anything above that is over the odds. Now is the time to re-launch into the Coalition. You would rather be on Howard now than Rudd, at the prices and during an campaign.
And if you can find somebody to give you a seat start for Howard, let us say 8 ½ or so, pass on my details. I am keen to wager heavily. It is election time and there is no better time to wager.