In a week’s time John Howard will have been Prime Minister for five years. He is Australia’s seventh longest-serving Prime Minister.
A couple of months ago, it seemed as if he were heading for a third term. Now it looks more likely that he will not. But he has nine months to reverse that position.
The six longer serving Prime Ministers all won three or more elections in succession. (Menzies won seven.)
Much is made of the difficulty of winning a third term. History shows differently. Seven Prime Ministers have gone to an election for a third time. All but one — Gough Whitlam – won. (I’m counting Stanley Bruce as having won the 1992 election even though Billy Hughes led the party in to it.) And Whitlam can hardly be counted as going to the people three times. On the second and third occasions he was forced into it.
So if Howard wins this election, it will not be some exceptional feat. He should – like Hughes, Bruce, Joseph Lyons, Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke – be a third-time winner. That is the normal pattern in Australian federal politics for those of merely average quality. It fact, once you have won the second term, you would have to be a bit of a political klutz not to win a third term in Australian Federal politics. The Australian people sus someone out quickly and chuck them out or they are given the classic Australian fair go.
We could be charitable and say that Howard was really a one-term Prime Minister. He got less vote than Labor in 1998 and only the luck of electoral boundaries saved him from being sussed and chucked.
So why is Howard now in this predicament where he is uniquely staring at defeat at his third election?
Perhaps it is because – despite the myth to the contrary – Howard is not a good political tactician, that he is not politically astute, but in fact is a political klutz. And he has only got to where he is by luck and serendipity.
The luck and serendipity come from having his return to the Opposition leadership given to him simply because there was no one else acceptable left standing. He won the 1996 election on the basis of Paul Keating and Labor making themselves unelectable. He lost the 1998 election with 49 per cent of the vote, but retained the Prime Ministership because his otherwise losing quantity of votes were in the right places.
The myth of Howard the tactician is bizarre when you look at the history.
Last weekend, social researcher Hugh Mackay referred to Howard as “”a master tactician”. Earlier this month Fia Cumming in the Sun-Herald called Howard “”an astute politician”. Former Defence Minister John Moore was quoted as saying that Howard was “”a better political tactician” than all recent Prime Ministers.
An Adelaide Advertiser report called him “”an astute man, even when it comes to trivial matters” (for putting his wife on the ideal dinner-party table).
Last year, Labor numbers man Graham Richardson called him the most remarkable politician of the modern era. “”He has a staying power the likes of which I have never seen. He’s tough and he’s resourceful.”
These accolades have been commonplace – richly undeserved for a man who had a record election majority fall into his lap after sitting on his hands as Leader of the Opposition, only to lose nearly all of it in three short years.
A master tactician would have put forward the big-ticket reform items while he had the moral authority of a large majority. A master tactician would have worked out his left from his right. Fearing a backlash from the right over the republic, reconciliation and migrants, Howard went for the monarchy, not saying sorry and detention. In doing so he unnecessarily drove most of the small-l liberals who voted for him in 1996 to Labor. If he had gone the other way he could have kept them. And where would the far right have gone – not to Labor, for sure. Perhaps to One Nation, but then back to the Liberals. And he denied himself a new-century feel-good factor, something no political tactician would do.
A master tactician would not have thrown away one of his best political assets – the perception he is honest – by talking about non-core promises and elasticising the code of ministerial conduct.
And now, Howard – the so-called master tactician – is throwing away his only remaining assets – a perception that he can manage the economy better than Labor and a perception of doggedness verging on stubbornness. The about faces on trusts, petrol and the BAS wipe them out, too.
Just average tacticians like Fraser and Hawke could easily cobble together a third term. That Howard is in danger of not doing exposes his lack of political skill.
The biggest failing is that he will hand government and the economy to Labor before they have been out in the cold long enough to rid themselves of the Keating hangers-on: Beazley, Crean, Brereton etc. The music will have hardly stopped before their bums are back on the Government bench over-taxing, over-spending and meddling with people’s lives.