Thanks, Robert, very much.

Best insomnia cure I’ve seen (or half-seen, more to the point) for a while…

Fair enough MB, I didn’t intentionally aim my counter-criticisms exclusively your way (‘Mark & Co’). Sorry. I think you’re being a bit disingenuous, though. You’re assuming that ‘these themes’ really don’t resonate among the ‘community as a whole’. Yet that assumption is the contentious essence of the Burchell-type criticism of the NHJ! type approach. You’re taking as a ‘Look! Why?‘ what should IMHO be an ‘Oh, really?‘ I’m not picking a nit. Unexamined and too-easily-received ‘truths’ like this IMHO underpin much of Howard’s success. I know I’m biased and of course I would say this, but I truly see Burchell’s thesis as just another part-product/part-producer of the echo-chamber accumulation of assumptions that have ended up as lofty Howardian ‘grand narratives’. Their mournful effect, whether in good faith or bad, has been to deliver and lodge deep within the current political classes cluster bomblets of contentious but vaguely-plausible ‘realpolitik truisms’, that are actually just self-reinforcing opinions. ‘Let’s analyse why NHJ! themes don’t resonate with the community as a whole‘. ‘Ordinary Australians are sick of ‘symbolic gesture politics‘, so why doesn’t the ALP dump its call for an apology?‘ ‘How will Rudd straddle the blue collar battler v. inner-city elitist divide?’ ‘What’s to be done about the bias at the ABC?‘…sleight-of-handed bullshit in bold, the rest just diversionary rhetorical fodder.

It’s fucking horseshit either way: weasel word conmanship or brain-dead (TM) duped acquiescence (from Burchell et al, not you!). Politics as usual, but it’s all on a grand narrative scale, nowadays. It’s the Info Age: today’s speculative Op Ed is tomorrow’s waved House Speech prop, is that night’s News Report soundbite, is the following day’s editorial, is that afternoon’s ‘policy comment/shift/announcement’, is the next day’s hasty opinion poll results, is the next day’s accepted ‘truth’…is next week’s bedded-in ‘electoral truism’ about what/how Ornry Strayuns believe/think/act. Such is exactly how the whole ‘Howard’s Battlers’ nonsense took hold. It’s a process that’s made Howard our second most successful PM ever, on very little of substance. It’s one that Rudd looks to have swallowed whole in one gulp, ther better to regurgitate on cue. Unfortunately to challenge it takes sustained energy, space, time and a reasonably unlikeable, pedantic, verbose hicksville dislike of being hustled by the glib. I don’t mean to go on and on, but there’s not really any other way to unpack this stuff. And I don’t mean to hijack your site/thread for our purposes, but it is relevant, and it does matter to us a lot with this latest update of NHJ! Already there’s been a disproportionate, preemptive dismissal of our latest efforts. It’s not the criticism, it’s the condescension. Burchell’s title alone is desinged to consign us to the history bin without even a dusting of hands. Well, both of us having worked through the night for the last six weeks to get it up – I’m daddy day-care, Margo’s back is still giving her hell – I’m not thrilled to see our efforts so summarily dismissed by his ilk without a fight. And so I dispute his fundamental claim – and also the assumption you made about NHJ!’s (relative) lack of resonance.

Our experience with the first book’s sales arguably suggests the opposite. Now fine, 30,000-odd copies ain’t in Da Vinci Code territory but it’s pretty good for a political book (more, I think, than the latest ‘hot’ Howard bio sold, for example). Anecdotally we were mailing thousands – tens of thousands – of NHJ! stickers to all parts of Australia: leftists, rightists, centrists, whatever, who cared. Did Paul Kelly follow our NHJ blogsite? Did Burchell ever check out the book reviews we got from a wide range of amateur readers, of very obviously wide demographic and political backgrounds? Whatever Hendo thought of them, the book’s reportage and argument – ideas, passions, (hates), rants, polemic, abuse, biased bile…whatever you want to call it – did resonate with a lot of readers. You can’t sell that many copies unless it does. And despite near-zero contents-review support from ACP and News – in all their coverage of the subsequent campaign the actual book, much less what it contained, was barely mentioned – it still helped spark a grass roots political campaign which that same mainstream media could not ignore. Valder’s (necessarily) more personalised, less substantial, more sloganistic NHJ! was widely covered. It had to be. It WAS resonating. It was covered (I bet often reluctantly) by Sunday, Meet the Press, the ABC, the Bully, all the broadsheets, many of the tabloids, radio of all stripes…surely all these are (admittedly second-hand) measures of what the newsmakers/breakers assessed was resonating with the ‘community’? And again, and above all, in the only seat where the NHJ! ‘crew’ was able to make a serious practical effort to articulate ‘these themes’ to a very representational part of the ‘community as a whole’…surely the attempt DID resonate?

Wouldn’t it at least make more analytical sense to wield Occam’s Razor (at least when it comes to Bennelong) and set yourself THIS task: ‘…to analyse why these themes don’t DID resonate well among the community as a whole, and where the emotion behind them is coming from…’? (Or rather, resonated better with the community as a whole relative to the more ‘moderate’ themes/style of the general ALP/anti-JH campaign, since a) no, we didn’t actually win Bennelong, but b) what we’re addressing here are the different approaches to anti-JH campaigning.) And what if the ALP had run a similar campaign to NHJ/Valder’s in a dozen key marginals in 2004? What if – instead of mocking us and distancing themselves at every opportunity – every single ALP candidate had brandished MK’s striking book cover and made a unified virtue of uncompromising anti-JH campaigning ‘affect’, Latham-style, NHJ!-style, GLW-style, Burnside-style, anyone-willing-to-fight-style? Laugh away, but if we Valder-Wilkie-Margolians could get a chunky swing away from the popular PM/Coalition in the context of a Latham-led ALP, why not other ALP candidates in actual then-winnable seats (ie where the 2004 ALP campaign team actually gave enough of a shit to chuck in some money and back their own candidate)?

Analysing what’s really going on in a piece like Burchell’s – Kelly’s, Hendo’s, this thread – does still matter, MB, because the approach Rudd is generally taking is to distance himself from ‘ours’ even more than Latham did. Well, OK, the polls are looking very good so far. But Rudd hasn’t won a single actual vote yet, let alone (another) 3.4 percent swing in Bennelong. I’m not arguing that McKew should run her campaign our way – I take your excellent point about different extra voters to be had this time. I’m just very interested in why the response among the ‘political sophisticates and hard-heads’ to our (at least arguable) modest success in 2004 has been to run like hell in the opposite direction. What really scares all these ‘political professionals’ about the way the Margo Kingstons, the Julian Burnsideses, the David Marrs…tackle public life and politics? Why is it that so many self-described ALP ‘moderates’ want to wish us NHJ!-ers into the realm of the kooky and/or the ‘pure and impotent’ with as much venom as (and usually less wit than) the Tim Blairs and Andrew Bolts? When (or is it because?) the only available relative evidence – from 2004 – suggests we’ve got a better recent track record on nicking votes from JH than they have?

Just askin’, MB. Surely it’s a fruitful avenue for at least analysing?

feral sparrowhawk: Thanks, that’s a generous gesture. OK, so all the above notwithstanding, I think we all know that it’s going to be impossible to figure out exactly why that 3.4 swing occurred in 2004. Wilkie’s profile was doubtless a big part. Demographic shifts, doctor’s wives, local issues, use-by dates…who knows. To be honest I’m happy to concede in theory that ‘we’ HH-ers might equally well have prevented an even bigger swing. More than happy to listen with an open mind (have been, on this thread). It just seems unfair to start any analysis of the impact of our sort of approach assuming that it doesn’t resonate with the community as a whole…when the only available election empirical evidence at least suggests otherwise, at least relative to any other anti-JH approach.

Thanks for the space, LP. I am very sorry for the long, self-advertising post (the thread was winding down anyway, I think). Scrambling to finish a book about politics with an election looming is nerve-wracking and exhausting, utterly hostage to timing and events beyond your control. Having got over the line it’s a bit heartbreaking to see it being undermined unseen and unread, however well-meaningly, on an instantaneously 24-7 publishable blogsite which has broadly sympathetic aims to yours. That the title ‘Not Happy John!’ has been turned into a kind of shorthand for a whole range of anti-Howard types and tropes and themes has meant that the book itself (and all the sweat we’ve put into both issues of it now, for not all that much personal reward, y’know)…has got a bit lost. At least give this update a read before you uncritically accept even elements of the Burchell (et al) thesis. He can’t have read the update when he wrote this, but I imagine he would have known it was due. It’s like being hit with the MSM stick before you’re even born.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Thanks again, Mark. I really appreciate your time and space.

I don’t think the campaign made the best use of the money it had, but its hard to argue with the conclusion that it knocked a point or two off Howard’s margin. That turned out to be an exceptionally valuable achievement. If Bennelong was on another 2% (or perhaps even 1%) the media would not be taking McKew’s campaign seriously at all – in fact she probably wouldn’t be running.

The national figures would be much the same perhaps, but that extra edge of hysteria in the Lib’s voices wouldn’t be there if they didn’t think there was such a high danger Howard could lose (and to such a latte sipping ABC based feminist). That panic certainly is one of the major obstacles to them constructing something which can dig them out of the hole

I’m just trying to analyse why these themes don’t resonate well among the community as a whole, and where the emotion behind them is coming from.

In this regard it would be productive to analyse movements over time in responses to questions in the Australian Election Study and the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes. I don’t have time to do that today (6 straight tutorials from noon to 6pm before the 1 hour 45 minute commute home!), but when I did that in relation to attitudes to gender issues and abortion I found that there was a strong trend over time away from conservative positions. Of course those questions involve issues and considerations which don’t necessarily apply to other questions which have moved the NHJ constituency.

But none of you who make these assertions have yet to produce one shred of hard evidence to support the claim that one single voter who was seriously considering voting against Howard last time was moved, by either the content or style of NHJ (book or Valder campaign) to do otherwise. The only ‘evidence’ to support this abstract idea has come in the form of contrived narratives of the kind Burchell produces here. Very often in my view if you scratch the veneer of those who make these claims you will find one of two things:

a) a Howard supporter masquerading as a ‘moderate’ – or a ‘swinger’, a ‘liberal’, or whatever – attempting the usual agent provocateur work, or maybe just trying to salve their conscience a bit ;

b) a hand-wringing Howard opponent who has become so spooked by his electoral success and sucker-punched by the whole ‘Howard battler v. inner-city elitists’ b/s con with which he has progressively knackered the ALP, and of which the ‘NHJ-is-counter productive’ line is just a subset, that they’re paralysing themselves by analysis. (Or worse, are just opportunistically spoiling for anti-Howard dirt-pissing rights…no, I’m not claiming any LP-ers are, Mark.)

I have neither interest in nor desire to get involved in slanging matches with those who are on the same basic side. There may be something in what many of say. The point is no-one can ever know. It’s just not possible to tailor any political message so laser-acutely that you will only win votes with it. And sometimes, Mark & Co, trying to do just that is what up-fucks you more than anything. This election is far from won by Rudd. Sometimes the simplest way towards a destination is straight at it, balls to the wall, buger the ‘nuance’, you know. But the real point is that it’s simply not possible for any of us to second-guess the ‘punters” (spew) more layered and nuanced responses to our messages, and so ‘tweak them’ to avoid stampeding the poor passive dears, as much as you all might think anyone fighting an election can (and should). To me that’s the worst elitist condescension of all. I’d rather trust them to see the merit in the force and sustance of my unambiguous stated case. Don’t forget, too, that the ‘affect’ you put on display for the voter is a huge and legitimate part of your pitch. ‘Representatives’ aren’t ‘just’ intellectuals or policy makers. They are supposed to represent the full measure of us as human beings. Rudd leaches himself of ‘affect’ at his peril. You too, Mark.

Me, I don’t know whether or not we Howard Hating NHJ-ers are ‘counter-productive’ in the broad electoral sense. I don’t really caree about someething over which I have no control. What other can I do but stand where I stand? (It must mean something that we HH-ers stand for a proper noun now, though?) Like I say, if anyone can psephsologically parse what we gain for the anti-JH vote from what we lose to get a net meaningful HH balance sheet in terms of votes this time around, I’ll be amazed (and you ought to contact a major party, because they’ll snap you up in a flash). Here’s what I can say with certainty:

In 2004 MK and a few of us Webdiarists wrote an anti-JH book book which sold 30, 000 odd copies, which is good for that kind of book. (And it’s hard, hard work to get a political book up at all, you know, whoever wrote that patronising ‘affect’ line…). That book helped inspire a campaign against the PM in his own then safe run by a former colleage and senior Liberal, John Valder. That non-candidate specific campaign won a swing against JH of 3.4 % in Bennelong, against a national swing to him. How much NHJ! as such – book or campaign – can be credited or not (including not at all, or even negattively) is again impossible to say. But for Christ’s sake…can we at least conssider the not-unreasonable possibility that our book was a net anti-Howard ‘good’, even mereely in those basic hard-headed votes gained/lost terms? Why are you all so determined to look for the worse possible spin on our efforts?

Margo and I have updated the book for this year. Again we’ve worked hard. We ask for nothing from anyone but a fair consideration of what the actual book says – not ‘grand narrative’ explicatory stuff from our political opposition, not even well-meaning second and third guessing by sites like LP at what impact it may or may not have on the electorate and all who sail singularly in her. By all means fel free attack us and disagree with that content vehemently. Ridicule our style, any errors you ping, our analysis, our cover photos even. But don’t dismiss it on the basis of your own invented narratives about how others will/may/could respond to it – unless you have some hard numbers to back you up. Remember: we are NOT ‘counter-productive’ unless our efforts help win only 1.0 votes to the anti-JH camp for every 1.1 vote we help drive away…if anyone can show that we do that, fine, then threads like this might have a substance. Happy to discuss how we can improve our performance in 2010.

The new edition, entitled – with all the flair and lyrical elan I know you’ve come to expect from us – ‘Still not happy, John!’ is out now. It’ll cost you $26.95. MK will launch it on Monday in Canberra. Website’s here.

Sory about the typos, I’ve got a baby all over the keyboaard. Thanks for the space, MB. It’s a terrriffic site, I like the way you run it, I like the discussions, I like the contributors. I don’t wish any fellow anti-Jh er any ill-will or malice. I understand why some of you tend to dismiss us, and me parrticuarly. I know we’ve always beeen a bit naff at Margo-central. It would just be nice if from time to time if those of us in the NHJ! ‘crew’ could get an occasional nod of solidarity from the more sophisticated HH-ers among you. Good luck to those LP-ers who are involved in campaigning.