We need an alternative to journalists’ political history, personality obsessed and uncritical of sources,

You won’t get that from this book.

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?

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.

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.