Opinion
Watching the knife fight between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard brought to mind that sage understatement of the late US House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill: "Politics ain't beanbag!"
The politics across the little ditch, in Oz, has some elements of blood sport. That across the big ditch, in the US, has been a study in group suicide. Republicans were convinced that the White House was within their grasp. That whichever of them emerged from the mini-elections of the primaries could easily overcome Obama.
Obama was seen as weakened by a frightening deficit, a wrecked economy, a slow, jobless recovery with unemployment at nine per cent and a foreign policy hamstrung by a war (Afghanistan) that had gone on for 10 years with little to show for it. Republicans had convinced themselves (and - they thought - the voters) that despite the $3 trillion effect of the Bush tax cuts, and the $3 trillion cost of the unfunded wars Bush started, their party, which Bush had led, had nothing to do with it. In the game of musical chairs that their spin doctors devised, Obama, who opposed the Iraq war, and had had no opportunity by virtue of his senatorial position to create the economic mess, was nevertheless the last man standing.
Predictions of Obama's certain defeat, may, like Mark Twain's early obituary, have been premature.
What happened to breathe new life into the moribund president? Could it be his killing of Osama bin Laden? Or evidence of economic recovery in the improved job statistics? The profitability of US firms and rise of stock prices to pre-2008 numbers? Maybe, but voters are fickle and slow to credit an administration when jobs have eroded so badly. Could it have been Obama's crooning of Al Green lyrics? Maybe not.
The best news for Obama has been the Republican circular firing squad.
To choose their nominee, Republicans have held 20 round robin debates punctuated by several states' primary elections. The primaries are more or less like American Idol, thinning the field. Except that many more people vote for American Idol. For example, of Maine's 1,328,118 population, only 5000 voted. Of eight candidates who started, only four remain. So here's what the exposure of those debates taught US citizens about the other four.
Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer and philanderer. He criticised the government-backed mortgage bank for poor standards while accepting $1.4 million ($1.7 million) in "consultation" fees from the same bank. Fellow Republicans label him "unstable". Colour him gone.
Representative Ron Paul, an OB/GYN, is something of a throwback in his Ayn Rand libertarianism. He'd axe the Federal Reserve, the nation's monetary regulators. He wants to go back on the gold standard and legalise all drugs, two of the best non-starters in politics. His libertarianism would stretch to letting non-insured medically needy die for their "poor choices". Humh? Where did I here those last two words?
Mitt Romney, the presumed frontrunner, is so tone deaf to the economic facts of life, in the comfort of his riches, that he offered to bet another candidate $10,000 over some triviality. And he characterised his $347,327 ($450,996) speaking fees as "not very much money". His $45 million earnings taxed at 14 per cent against a typical wage-earner's 25 per cent, have made him the poster boy of economic inequality.
Rick Santorum, who likened homosexuality to bestiality, is the latest serious challenger to Romney. He is so Catholic he is out of touch with the majority of his faith. He would ban contraception which may sit well with the Vatican but not with 92 per cent of US Catholic women who disagree with their church on this and many social issues like the gravity of child endangerment by priests.
The more Americans see and learn about these Republican nominees, the less there is to like. It's early for Obama to be calling for the moving vans.