In Western societies, there was a baby boom from the late 1940s-early 1960s. In most other societies the baby boom was in the 1980s and ’90s, or even now. It is a fact that politicians will seek to group voters and court their votes by promoting policies that resonate with them, and that as most politicians are middle-aged men they will tend to be a bit scared of large numbers of ambitious young people who aren’t necessarily ambitious for what said politicians had been at that age.

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I’m puzzled that some correspondents believe a direct comparison of Robert Mugabe and John Howard is valid.

I fear that many of us are sadly lacking in historical knowledge, understanding of other nations (e.g. Zimbabwe, USA, Cuba, New Zealand, Tasmania) - and hence we’re prone to poor political judgement, if not hyperventilating hysteria.

I really think many of us have been blinded by fury: “Howard-hating” is a crude but apt term. A drawback of this passion, I think, is that it can reduce a person’s ability to accurately delineate exactly what the Government is doing, and why ….. and thereby may hinder the development of an effective remedy.

Greed and hatred can play a large role in politics: is the average, placid voter inclined to shy away when she/he sees those in play??

Mark Latham was a “great hater”. So decades earlier was Clyde Cameron. Did their hatreds blind them to electoral fundamentals? Did the voters reject them because they were haters?

Kim Beazley, I feel, was basically lazy. Remember his lounging at the table in Question Time? Mocking the PM with that scholarship-boy superiority - then, later, utterly crestfallen when inexplicably rejected by the electorate….

By the way, while I think AGE of itself is no criterion for election; character and personality should certainly be factors that voters take into account ….. Thank the lord for single-member electorates. At least there, we the voters can pass judgement on party hacks.

Vote below the line in the Senate.
Don’t let parties dictate their list and their preferences to you.

cheerio,
Ambigulous

No, I do not think BilB meant that Howard was analogous to Mugabe in every respect including skin colour and mass murder. What he/she meant, I think, is that Howard and Mugabe both display the overweening sense of entitlement which gets in the way of proper thought and really useful policy directions.

Feral Sparrowhawk - I suspect the values that Howard likes about East Asians is that they don’t have a strong union tradition. That’s why he’s suddenly so keen on bringing Asian workers over on visas to fill the gaps in the skills shortage that his government has created out of its own neglect for education and training.

Although this looks like a change of attitude, I would strongly argue that this is just a case of one firmly held archaic prejudice (against unions) winning out over another firmly held archaic prejudice (against Asians) for the sake of political expediency - ie to achieve his great retrograde vision of an Australia without unions and a 19th century industrial-legal framework. Besides a lot of Asian immigrants have actually settled in his electorate so of course he is anxious to appear friendly and tolerant of them in order to attract their votes.

“I also feel uneasy about the atmosphere of insinuation that people in their late 60s are somehow past it”

“Howard might love test cricket but 20/20 is the game for the new generation.”

“Most of the generationalism stuff we read is rubbish - but there are different aspects to “youthâ€? and “old ageâ€? culturally now, and materially.”

Suz, howard’s age matters not because he is past ‘it’, generic judgements based on age are stupid. Rather, his age matters because the ‘it’ within which he finds himself socially, culturally and politically should be past.

Its all relative - move on - there’s nothing to see here.

I saw Dolly Downer on telly last night raving and frothing about how Labor was doing it, followed by a clip of Rudd smiling and wishing Howard a happy birthday.

Seems to me the whole thing has been whipped up by government ministers as a defensive tactic. Rudd is far too smart to be wedged on ageism. And in any case why bother? Howard made his own news on the subject by tripping up the stairs.

And it was sad to watch this silly little man flying into the arms of the troops in Timor to celebrate his birthday. He feels so unloved that he has to order the army to give him three cheers (or at least, Angus did it for him). That’s the real Mugabe analogy.

To suggest that Australia could turn into a Zimbabwe is of coarse a real stretch of the imagination. But to say that it is impossible is to delude oneself. I went to primary school in a sense of total security in Port Moresby in the fifties (1950’s). Soon after my family left there New Guinea became independent and things started to change. Some friends from new Zealand moved there 10 years ago and spent their time in Papua living in a compound for security. I remember the winter olympics in Sarejevo. Not long after that I was hearing about people in the streets being picked off by government snipers from the surrounding hills. I remember when Beirut was a jewel on the Mediterranean. I remember when Uganda was a western like country.

What I have noticed is that the time that it takes for a country to go from peaceful civility to chaos and anarchy is very short. Countries where one can expect to live in total security from the cradle to the grave are relatively few and there are at the moment more countries falling into chaos than there are countries arising from it. So the thing that we have here in Australia is very precious, should be protected, and should not be taken for granted.

Mind you, I’m sure we can recall how the Coalition and their media cheerleaders used to goad Beazely with lines like “policy lazy” and “hasn’t got the ticker” - which true were valid sentiments but deliberately couched in language to remind us he was a big fat bugger.

There’s alway’s gonna be a trade off between energy and wisdom (or enthusiasm and rat cunning if you like) in the leaders we hire - but it never hurts to make sure they’re actually physically fit enough to handle the workload.

For example a deaf pollie is a bit like a three-legged racehorse.

“What’s that?”

“I SAID PRIME MINISTER THAT A DEAF POLLIE IS A BIT LIKE A THREE-LEGGED RACEHORSE!”

I do agree though that Howard and Mugabe have some things in common. They both lead ex-Brit colonies, sport glasses and just don’t have the figure to wear a good suit. But John would never get out of control like Bob has. For starters, all the corporate donations would dry up and Janette wouldn’t get to hang at Buck House anymore.

Churchill was 66 in 1940, and 71 when the war ended. He last held power in 1955, when he was 81.

Mind you, Howard is to Churchill as a cricket stump is to Stonehenge.

Furthermore, I think St Margaret is wrong saying “he hasn’t changed one iota in all those years, hasn’t grown, hasn’t developed, hasn’t changed his views but merely cloaked the more retrograde of them (such as Asian immigration) to suit the voting public.” I think Asian immigration is one area where Howard genuinely has changed his mind. He hates people who are not like himself. He used to think that included Asians. Then some of his friends convinced him that East Asians hold a lot of the values he does and he decided he liked them. He still hates Arabs etc, but not the Chinese and Vietnamese he was opposing in the 80s.

Re Age, I almost entirely agree with Suz. I’d take Nelson Mandela at 90 over any of the clowns on the government benches, and the way they’re moving the opposition too. But there is no doubt that most people do get less sharp at some point along the way, and that tends to be steeper after 65. I don’t think a fixed age rule makes sense, at least for a job like this, but maybe it is legitimate to at least watch a little harder for signs.

Howard has many of the same tendencies as Mugabe. He has the same regard for the truth and minorities as has Mugabe. He has the same obsession with personal control. He also has the same disdain for criticism and world opinion. What Howard hasn’t had that Mugabe has had, are 27 years in power to smash things apart with illconceived policies. Given another 16 years Howard has every chance of achieving a similar result as Mugabe. I doubt that any Zimbabwean of 1991 would have predicted the Zimbabwe of today. But feel free to be a Howard apologist.

Wow, that’s pretty moronic. Surely that didnt make sense while you were writing?

Howard deserves to lose this election, but he is nothing like Robert Mugabe and anyone who claims he is is some sort of bizarro-Tim Blair-style-commenter.

Its his slow poisoning of Australian democratic institutions that warrants electoral retirement!

I don’t think it is much more than the fact that the boomers have been the middle aged for a while.
They are a considerable influence, as they were in their 20s, and 30s and as they will be into old age.
Old will probably cease to be old as they age, they will be boomers.

Sounds better to be boomers rather than middle aged or old, however you want to define them.

Howard was the perfect, almost from central casting, government leader required for the times. Pity that so many people got so distracted for 11 years by him and his cohorts they plain forgot to pay attention to the string pullers. There have beeen a few notable exceptions who have annotated the history and traced out and joined the dots to explain where we stand today, shivering, facing a Ruddish Labor government.

Howard hopefully is headed for the coup de grace - an outcome devoutly to be wished . But the physical disability meme which will increasingly be applied to him now blood is scented, loathe him as I do, strips dignity not only from him, but more so those who delineate it.

Most of all it is completely, totally irrelevant and explains nothing important about why his government should be repudiated.

No, I don’t think so. All those classifications are arbitrary and cultural. What’s significant is the difference in meaning of the cultural descriptor.

Any conclusions to be drawn from changes in descriptor?

The boomers are a large component of the population. I imagine their opinions could be argued to carry some cultural weight.