Here’s another don’t waste your $34.95 book review, and for many of the same reasons as Mark identified as failures in an earlier 2007 federal election tome from Melbourne University Press - Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07.
If anything, Peter Van Onselen and Philip Senior’s Howard’s End: The Unravelling of a Government is an even more tedious read. That might have been evident from the fact that even the now obligatory astroturf “news” stories about the book couldn’t find too much in the way of “shock! horror!” type “revelations” to excerpt, as I observed at the time.
The blurb claims:
In the tradition of Pamela Williams’ The Victory, Howard’s End analyses and makes sense of the result and its far-reaching implications for the people of Australia.
Well, that might indeed be a worthy aim, but the problem is that the book doesn’t do much analysis, and very little sense-making and if there’s anything in it about the implications for the people of Australia as opposed to the future of the Liberal party (such insight filled gems as “rebuilding the Liberal Party after the 2007 federal election defeat was always going to be difficult…”) I’ve completely missed them.
If political journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history, this is apparently the first draft of the first draft. Through 192 pages, the book tediously recounts the events after Rudd’s ascension to the Labor leadership on an almost week by week basis. Mungo McCallum did much the same thing, but at least it was funny. If you’re looking for a reminder of the interminable “perpetual campaign”, then probably you’re pushing the tragic in political tragic a bit further than it normally should go, but you might do better to read Mungo, or indeed click on the archive of this blog. There’s only so much interest in reading exactly what John Howard announced about training policy on day whatever of the campaign, or what Rudd said in a press conference whenever in May. It reads as if someone’s sat down with a stack of newspapers and paraphrased the tedium of day to day political reporting.
But it gets worse. The much vaunted analysis is trite or obvious, and the insider sources seem to have all been on the Liberal side of the aisle, but even then we learn nothing much of any great interest over and above what informed observers perceived at the time. There’s a heavy leaning to the uncritical acceptance of whatever sources say, just as with Jackman, although obviously Van Onselen and Senior had fewer sources. There’s also an uncritical leaning to the right, with Rudd’s policies often being described as thin or symbolic but with enconiums about “the [Howard] government’s sound economic management” being regularly repeated.
Bernard Keane observed in Crikey that while the authors claim that “the press gallery” wanted a change of government, the day in day out nutsoid denialism and cheerleading of the News Limited hacks in the then Government Gazette passes entirely unmentioned. Actually, about the only interesting bit of the book is a bit of ex post facto insight into where the Shanahans, Milnes and Pearsons were getting their psephological theories from - there’s an odd parallelism between the delusions in Howard’s own office (noted as having contacted Shanahan to ensure that a story made the front page of The Australian on one occasion) and Crosby Textor and all the batty lines the punditariat served up - principally the theory that Labor could lose with 52% of the vote and that marginal members might have up to a 4% personal vote. Tony Abbott and others also get portrayed in passing, with no reflection on the significance of all this, as suggesting angles for the punditariat. Anyone for fearless journalism, Dennis? Hold the front page, Chris!
[There are also a few bizarre mentions of Piers Akerman columns that add nothing to the story. Though his prediction that some National Party era scandal in Queensland whose name I can’t even recall now would be a sleeper issue in the election goes unmentioned. Rather, he’s portrayed writing searing critiques of the Rudd opposition. I really hope someone wasn’t touting for a favourable mention in the Daily Terror to increase their book sales?]
So - ironically - we have an underplayed and unconscious indictment of Australian political journalism in a book that - despite being written by two academics - manages to convey even less insight and analysis, let alone matching of social trends and political developments - than Jackman’s book - written by a political journalist. It’s another completely “insider” account where the electorate appears to be a cipher, appearing only through polls and John Howard’s apparent intuition, and with politics reduced to the most mechanical of campaign methodologies and strategies.
Again, the question that should be raised is one for Melbourne University Press. These books are just underdone. This one, frankly, feels like Van Onselen left much of the writing to his junior author Senior - a PhD student - and then never quite got around to adding the analytical gloss or shaping much of a narrative. It cries out for an editor. It may well be that there’s a commercial calculation at work here - that a book with John Howard on the front cover is going to have a very limited shelf life in Borders or wherever - but when are we going to see some serious and considered writing on the 2007 election? The Christmas quickies were mostly better than the books that apparently had a longer gestation period.
Van Onselen and Senior - in their academic papers - demonstrate that they actually are a lot better than this. I don’t know if it’s deliberate dumbing down for a supposedly mass market, but if this sort of tome produces only yawns in the rather small market of political bloggers, well - why not wait longer and put more effort into something that lives up to its hyped promise?
I actually think Van Onselen is grossly overrated. I can’t understand why he has become the commentator of choice in recent years. Most of his comments are generic and show little in the way of original thought. I suppose he is personable on the television but that is about it. I have not read his academic material but I don’t see what he adds.
Peter van Onselen first surfaced (to my notice anyway) about half way through the Howard years, writing an op/ed column for the Canberra Times (why? presumably better penetration that the WA rag).
His “analyses” were thin, but given the critical journalistic wasteland that then existed, he was at least mildly interesting with his inside stories on Liberal Party machinations (a bit like Christian Kerr, or Hilary Bray).
What was apparent then, was that he lacked any critical insight, and just plodded out the inside “facts” in a journalistic style. He obviously pleased the Liberal Party ayleet, and was boosted into authorship with his Howard biography, which sold pretty well, and gave him the leg in the door for this latest offering.
I was only a few pages into teh Howard biography, when I read that Janette Howard was raised in Vaucluse in a wealthy professional family and was known for gadding about in a sports car (reprised later by her daughter to much scandal about parking).
Before this, Janette was publicly portrayed as a Kogarah girl (by her erstwhile friends). Only later in her teens did her family move to Vaucluse. Did Peter van Onselen purposively air-brush Janette’s personal history to make her look less “lower class”? I don’t know, but it disgusted me. Hagiography is cheap.
The rest of the book was a drab read, with the possible exception of a small note about Peter Costello remarking that he had seen Noel Pearson avidly reading “The Road to Serfdom”. That was an eye-opener…
“writing an op/ed column for the Canberra Times (why? ..”
I agree with your comments Grace, but on this particular score: just try to get an op-ed published elsewhere if you’re an unknown.
Good little paper, the C’r'imes.
Mark - did you intend to get the title of the book wrong?
“
The UnravellingDownfall…”The end hasn’t happened yet.
The War Crimes Trials and serving the rest of his life in jail will be
“The End”
I have heard Peter Van Onselen present at a Griffith University seminar on the uses and misuses of electorate detabases by the major political parties. He was very good and revealing, and showed that he is capable of intellectual heavy lifting when he puts his mind to it. Having said that, I have read enough of his pieces intended for non-academic audiences to have formed the opinion that he doesn’t put his mind to it very often. Two examples: a piece co-written with Wayne Errington which referred swingeingly to the ALP Left’s “harebrained social policies” without mention of a single ALP Left social policy or an explanation of what was “harebrained” about it, and a piece co-written (I think) with Peter Senior after the 2004 Federal election which rehashed the usual Murdoch Press and Labor Right boilerplate about Mark Latham’s “disastrous” forests policy and how many votes it lost.
FDB - did you intend to get the author of the post wrong?
Sorry Kim - although if it was an error, perhaps misattribution is welcome in this case!
FDB, I have the book next to me right now. The title on the front cover is “Unravelling”!
That’s weird though - the publisher’s pick has “downfall”. Who knows?
Yes, Lefty E, and I seem to recall van Onselen himself saying in one of his Crimes columns during the Howard years that his weekly scribblings were in the nature of a political diary, to be published as a book later…and so it has come to pass, and hence the lack of any insight or analysis.
Anyway, I have been down to the Old Booke Shoppe and purchased a copy. My first impression is that the book is in very big print on big pages with lots of white space, with an old man on the front cover, walking as fast as he can around the lake in a town in which he refused to live.
Let us know any further impressions, grace, though I suspect you’ve summed it up already!
Kim, I also purchased a copy of David Love’s “Unfinished Business: Paul Keating’s interrupted revolution”, so reading them together should be fun…
Yep! Though it’s a bad book too. Pointless digressions about Macquarie Bank (justified as somehow exemplary of finance capital PJK style), highly tendentious etc. The author says he initially conceived of it as three newspaper articles and maybe that’s how it should have stayed. Another insta book which disappoints…
Even van Onselen’s work on the electoral databases was a bit, well, lazy, given he was a liberal staffer who had access to the database materials in the first place.
Interesting analysis, Kim.
Some credit has to be given to Van Onselen for having a go, throwing a pebble into a very still pond of political writing.
And to my mind he appears lightweight. We’d know otherwise, by his books creating a stir. But this one just sounds, from its effect, like another longwinded Saturday op piece - a ripple is it.
I think part of this (as Kim points to) is a public disconnect with politics, happening over a long period of time, and deliberately created by Howard through his “front of shop” ways. While we changed govt, I don’t think that shows much more a connection than moving to the shop next door. This is evidenced in a public not knowing who Rudd is - politically - other than media grabs and a busy sunny breakfast moment. Nothing critical terribly mattered as the nation slipped sideways to an unclenched face.
Other movements have brought about this disconnect, too. The advent of television created the celebrity pollie (and journo), ending up in the ten second grab, following on to be diminished itself in public mind as other “entertainment” exploded. Maybe not “entertainment” exactly, but the public interest element of living modern life was ripped from the political sphere and spread through various other powerful media.
Van Onselen is a product of these times, and simply panders to them. It comes across as all skimming across the surface stuff, wrapped up with saleable grabs and enough gravitas as deemed by the public to allow acceptance of it. Where’s the depth and history of the writer, politically? Where’re the years of buried-in grunt?
What’s going to change it, this disconnect? Tragics would love to know the guts of the Howard years, or any political party’s untold story, on just the politics of it alone. But I’m wondering it wouldn’t get published on that basis. Just a guess, given even political scandals aren’t cutting it, it may be something as much as a personal scandal which takes back the public interest in “politics” - though, hopefully, Australia doesn’t go there.
It’s more than a bit bleak at present.
He turns up on 6pr as there political commentators now during this state election not that he says much of interest or to disrupt the Liberal party I tend to dismiss him as just just another Lib mouthpeice.
Then again PR use Shamahan as a fed commentator,I am also more that amused but the ads being run by the Public service unions,if ever there was a case getting what you wish for that must be it,I think if the Libs get in Unions like the Public service ones running the ads, will find out why,I hope they enjoy explaining the jobs losses to the members.
As the prevailing feeling is that they could fire 65%of the Public service in WA and not notice the difference
Judith Brett’s Monthly Essay Exit Right: The Unraveling of John Howard is the best on what happened last year. And don’t forget Peter Brent at Mumble predicted Howard’s demise in a piece he wrote in 2005. The reference pops up in Nicholas Stuart’s election book What Goes Up. But in typical insider fashion it is not analyzed or discussed in great depth. As all us blog readers know we knew what was going on last year by reading Lavartus, Possum, Poll Bludger and Mumble. Although at times I would come to them after having ingested the morning newspaper punditocracy and sometimes I thought I lived in a parallel universe. Rather than books on Howard I would like to read a mea culpa from the gallery entitled How we got it so wrong. But I won’t hold my breath.
I’m buying it although from a research account. These type of books are useful as primary sources but little more. But has there ever been better? The post-Whitlam books are a mixed bag.
Take for instance Jules Witcover’s Campaign series (about the American presidential campaigns). Although they are fairly factual, Witcover provided some quite unique and ORIGINAL insights. Of course, there is also Hunter S. Thompson ‘Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail’?
Geoff, honestly it’s not all that useful for research, I’d have thought. Jackman much more so because you find out what Labor apparatchiks think, even if all sorts of criticisms of her lack of any analysis or sifting of sources can be made. With this one you’re really not getting much other than a week by week “this happened, that happened” account.
This is the hardest post I’ll ever have to write….
Van Onselen has got things wrong - like his prediction that Howard would hold on to Bennelong - but I heard him give one interview way before the election where he got one thing very right: he said he thought Howard was gone the minite he brought in Work Choices.
Also, let’s have some fun. Think back to what were the most pathetic examples of grasping at straws on behalf of the Howard Government by the Oz. Anyone have any favourites? Any talking points obviously written up by the previous Government and put to press verbatim by the Oz? Any hidden demographic or tactic that would save the Man of Steel at the last minute?
…I misspelled minute.
Congratulations, Kim, on a thoughtful and generally excellent book review. High quality on LP!
I’ve written on the 1920s and 1930s and wish that people back then were writing books like the one discussed here for that period. We need an alternative to journalists’ political history, personality obsessed and uncritical of sources, and to historian’s political history, the later often marked by an excess of empathy and an idealist overemphasis on the power of discourses and rhetoric.70s Marxists such as Poulantzas posed the right questions .
You won’t get that from this book.
Not sure this is the Oz’s most egregious piece from last year but it certainly the funniest the famous Shanahan sausage column
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/dennisshanahan/index.php/theaustralian/comments/kevins_sizzle_not_snag_free
It led to the classic question was Dennis holding his own sausage when he wrote it. Also led to Oz Obergruppenfuhrer Chris Michell ringing blogger Peter Brent at Mumble to tell him they were going to do him. And resulted in three editorials railing about the bloggers and claiming The Oz was the only accepted reservoir of wisdom. Such tripe but sadly they seem to believe it down at the Oz. Drinking your own bathwater is what the folks in the US call it. See http://www.pollbludger.com/506
Rx at #23 - thanks!