There’s a bit of a problem with this meme.

In a (now) rare piece of relatively sensible and reality based political commentary, Lenore Taylor, formerly of the Australian Financial Review, wrote in The Australian on the weekend that the “personal destruction of Rudd” thing failed dismally for the serried ranks of Howardistas in government and – were she writing completely honestly she might have added – in News Limited in 2007.

She also neglected to observe that Dennis Shanahan was the most enthusiastic participant in this collective delusion. While Glenn Milne, one might conjecture, did the mud slinging antecedent to the putative glorious Howard re-election that never was.

I don’t think Taylor – or any other commentators – noted that Rudd made himself a small target as Opposition Leader (… yes, they said so at the time, but two years is apparently a thousand weeks in politics in the collective memory of the press gallery). Malcolm Turnbull, by contrast, is a very big one.

He’s hoist on his own petard, and Rudd, Gillard and Tanner only need to stoke the fires now. The Libs – and their false friends in News Limited – will now do the job for them… while the PM again sails up into the non-political nation building good bloke etc. stratosphere, not dented in the slighted by increasingly frenzied rants about “spin” in bizarre articles in The Australian, which in the case of Imre Salusinzky’s latest, consisted mostly of on the record quotes from one John Howard.

[Incidentally, anyone else wondering who the source for the "Howard never would have acted like Turnbull did" meme is? I suspect John Winston himself. His cold dead hand appears to have been all over the News Limited coverage recently, overtly and covertly, and I suspect he's taking the chance to destroy Turnbull, whom he's never loved, and reward his buddy Tone, who made such a big deal of continuing to visit the former Dear Leader's humble North Shore digs to extend the hand of friendship in his time of trial...]

The madness of touting Tony Abbott’s leadership chances just points to how inward looking and utterly disconnected from political reality all this nonsense has become.

The Libs should forget about leadership saviours. Their first step to being politically competitive would actually be to recognise that the Murdoch Empire has no clothes. Everyone else has. They risk going down with the ship. But don’t hold your breath. It’s difficult to breathe from a thousand leagues under the sea.

Nb: Note lack of links to the Taylor and Salusinzky pieces in the OO. I’ve noticed that they’re actually making their content harder to find online, which I suspect is preparatory to the erection of Teh Great Pay Wall of News. Should you wish to refer to the articles in question, you can probably find a copy in a library of the weekend edition. In the meantime, they’re losing advertising revenue from the links I would have otherwise inserted. Sad, isn’t it?

You have to wonder if there’s not some level at which this is a bit of subconscious revenge on Peter Costello, whose book launch tomorrow will now surely be “overshadowed”, as the meejah like to say.

Let’s see if the Turnbull boosters’ claims that they already have the numbers are right. Or will Malcolm Turnbull even put his hand up? What happens if he loses? Surely he couldn’t stay on the front bench. Nelson must be dreaming if he thinks this will end the thing. If he marginalises Turnbull to curry favour with the hard right, he’s still got a divided party. If he keeps Turnbull on the front bench, he looks weak. But at least it might kill off the Costellology.

Update: Michael Brissenden reported on the 7 30 Report that Nelson had been more angry than ever seen before (is that possible?) at a party room meeting and had promised to “clean out” his office and the front bench if he wins. He could lose endless commentator Tony Abbott for a start, and the promise regarding the office presumably refers to his habit of going off the reservation and making policy unilaterally – for instance with the $30 a week pension increase. Presumably the implication that Nelson will be clearing out his desk is unintended, but maybe interesting in a Freudian slippy sorta way.

More strange is a reported promise to “toughen up” the line on climate change while simultaneously walking away from the carping opposition to same sex rights in the Senate. This sounds like a typical Nelson left/right straddle to me, but apparently he’s going to show a “different” side to his leadership. More props? No more truck trekking? Who knows?

Turnbull is standing by the way.

More: Possum has posted Nelson’s press release.

Update: Bruce Billson, the Shadow Minister for Communications (who knew?), duly communicated on Lateline tonight. It wasn’t 100% clear, but he seemed to be suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull might remain on the front bench if Nelson wins. Yeah, right, that’d be smart. But it does show that Nelson’s inclusive or something. Oh, and “strong action on climate change without wrecking the economy” may or may not be a different stance from their most recent unintelligible confusion. But communications expert Billson appeared pleased that it was a nifty soundbite. Who thinks that somehow all this isn’t going to be over tomorrow morning?

Decided [by Kim]: It’s Turnbull by 45-41. New open thread here.

Update [by Kim]: I’ve put up a post with some analysis of what Turnbull needs to do here.

Elsewhere: Hoyden, Surfdom, Poll Bludger.

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/nelsonbeans.jpg"

Photo courtesy of Grodscorp.

Boycott the thing, I say!

Ps: The crew at the Opposition Organ were in a collective sulk over the weekend with the entire news analysis section or whaddeveritis full of Cossie this or Cossie that. In Crikey, Bernard Keane underlines one of only two serious points to be made about the whole memoir touting/breathless speculation show:

“Agenda journalism is a dangerous pursuit,” wrote Frank Devine in The Oz last week, quoting John Hartigan.

“It makes newspapers tediously predictable at best and, at worst, cumulatively untrustworthy.”

It was good to see that old Frank is still capable of writing cogently, even if it is the same right-wing bile he’s been vomiting for decades. But his description of his own paper was spot on. Tediously predictable and untrustworthy — especially when it tries to play kingmaker.

The other point?

Andrew Robb’s argument that the best thing for the party is for everyone to knuckle down and get on with their jobs is true enough, but it’s not going to happen. Not with Costello still on the backbench, not with everyone waiting for Nelson’s next gaffe, not with the clock ticking, every second and every opinion poll taking Nelson closer to the end.

And not with Tony Abbott and other, more anonymous, Liberals opening their yaps every day to offer their own self-interested take on events.

The only people knuckling down and getting on with the job will be Kevin Rudd and his ministers, confident they can operate without serious pressure from the other side. And Rudd only looks vulnerable when he’s under pressure.

It’s not as though Kevin Rudd and the government couldn’t do with a bit of, well, opposition. You know, in the real sense, not populist bollocks designed mainly to try to get Brendan Nelson an extra point or two in the almighty Newspoll.

The IMF didn’t think so. The Fin has obtained leaked Treasury documents prepared for discussions with IMF officials last year. The upshot of the story can be summed up by its tagline – “Peter Costello’s fiscal policy was potentually more damaging than any other period since the Whitlam years”. IMF wonks were deeply concerned about a stimulatory budget and fiscal policy at a time of economic over-heating, and the article by Paul Cleary concludes:

… from 2003 onwards, Costello executed a sustained expansion of fiscal policy during a sustained upswing in the economy. Looking further back, his predecessors had only engaged in such a policy during recessions. The result of this outbreak of bad policy in the last years of the Howard government is likely to be a long period of inflation and weak economic growth, and it may take some considerable time, and pain, to get the balance back in the right order.

For all I know, Costello might blame John Howard for this in his memoirs, if he mentions it at all. That was certainly the line he took in interviews for the Van Onselen and Errington biography of Howard which came out last year. But it begs the question of how a weak Costello completely failed to restrain the fiscal profligacy of the PM.

Costello’s anodyne musings on economic policy have been subjected to an unwarranted level of parsing and “Costellogical” deconstruction. In truth, it may be that the record suggests that he was among Australia’s worst Treasurers.

None of this, or Costello’s confirmation of what almost everyone who wasn’t a member of the punditariat knew all along, appears to have stopped either the endless media speculation about his leadership prospects or the constant talk of a coup against Brendan Nelson. Bizarrely, there’s still an arcane discussion going on within Liberal ranks about the appropriate level of deference to Howard Costello is supposed to adopt in his memoirs in order to keep his non-existent leadership ambitions alive:

Mr Howard is likely to become enraged by any criticism of his wife. Opposition insiders last night said reflections on Mrs Howard were one thing he would not accept.

However, Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott said he had been assured the book was measured and paid appropriate tribute to Mr Howard.

Abbott himself is now being compared to Sarah Palin, so ludicrous has all this become, and his incessant public commentary on the polls and the leadership, which Joe Hockey was quite right to say is totally counter productive, may be a reflection of his own ambitions for the Deputy’s gig.

This mob very rarely seem to have anything to say about their own shadow portfolios, expending all their energy on plotting and commentary on their internecine disputes. It’s obvious that they’ve still got one eye looking over their collective shoulder to their former Dear Leader, who haunts them from beyond his own political grave. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that Howard and Costello’s legacy is deeply flawed.

Some bright spark within the Opposition might like to consider the unglamorous but essential strategy of actually doing some policy hard yards, rather than placing all their eggs in the twin baskets of stunt-dom and the watch for the next leadership messiah.

Also, and just asking, how does Anna Clark, who did a lot of actual research into what high school students in Australia and Canada thought about their national histories (answer – boring as) get pinged constantly as “Granddaughter of Manning Clark”… ZOMG! Probs a Commie too! Just like Stuart MacIntyre! We await the family tree of Dr Kevin Donnelly and Mr Keith Windschuttle. We trust their antecedents are pure. Or maybe this silliness only happens because Anna is… (shock!) a female. And therefore presumably unable to be distinguished from her Grandfather.

Taking this nonsense seriously for just one second, has it occurred to teh History Warriors that maybe Stuart MacIntyre is actually performing a bit of a public service? Not everyone is an underemployed “education consultant” or thinktank “Fellow” and able to drop everything to ensure the teh kidz learn teh Story of Australia.

Or, maybe this nonsense shouldn’t be taken seriously at all?

Elsewhere: Carlton’s lone classic liberal Andrew Norton on conservative educational delusions.

But you can be sure that from the end of the next week until at least the end of the following week, it will be all-Costello-all-the-time in the Australian media.

Lord save us.

This question from Essential Research (which incidentally has Labor sitting on a 59/41 2PP split) is a hypothetical, but it’s still an interesting result:

Kevin Rudd is preferred to Peter Costello head-to-head 53 per cent to 27 per cent.

Elsewhere: Possum shows why the Costello dithering is doing a lot of damage to the Libs.

Andrew Bartlett points out:

I remain to be convinced that being the best performer at ‘throwing the switch to vaudeville’ does much on its own to attract public support.

Kevin Rudd didn’t defeat John Howard because he had a lot of witty putdowns in parliament. Nor did John Howard win against Paul Keating in 1996 for this reason. Indeed, one could argue that this fixation with Keating’s apparently unchallenged ability to dominate the arena during Question Time was a key reason why so many commentators argued he still had a chance of winning in 1996, well after the electorate had already decided they’d had enough.

Exactly.

Paul Keating knew himself that his aggression in Parliament was a negative with the public, even if it caught the limited attention spans of the press gallery. Hence the move to a more “dignified” Prime Ministerial persona, and the restriction of his appearances in Questions. The opposition, of course, did all they could to bait Keating at every opportunity, knowing full well that mastery of put downs and witty insults translated into a perception of unlikeability and overweening arrogance. And they want to promote Costello because he’d project a similar image? No wonder people talk about a media disconnect.

I suspect this was some sort of pre-emptive strike to try to forestall any credit claiming by Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan if (as expected) the cash rate is cut by 25 points later today. The politics haven’t played out to script, with Nelson’s comments that he wouldn’t make such a call in government playing into Rudd’s hands.

But it was interesting to hear Nelson’s justification on Lateline last night. Nelson argued that he was reflecting what “many Australians” thought. For those who’ve been paying any attention to what he’s had to say since he became leader, that’s typical. He appears to regard himself as some sort of transmission belt. Hence all the emo-ting. It’s an intriguing view of political leadership because it completely eviscerates the notion of leadership itself. Perhaps it’s one reason why his own leadership is in so much trouble.

Speaking of which, Christian Kerr, who brings you “balance and fact”, occupies his column inches this morning deconstructing Peter Costello’s interjections in Question Time. Perhaps this is his own small contribution to balancing out the purported paucity of analysis on the part of bloggers. It’s really important for our nation’s destiny, after all, to parse Costello’s throw away lines every which way:

“Wow! What about the meaning of life?” Costello exclaimed.

After Gillard taunted him in the parliament last week about his publisher’s motto, “books with spine”, he responded: “If she bought a copy, I might sign it for her. She could take it back to that flat where she lives with the spartan furniture, put it up on the bookshelf with her current library, the collected works of Marx and Engels. She could file it alphabetically, by author, ‘Cos’. It will come after ‘Com’, for The Communist Manifesto, and before ‘D’, for Das Kapital. Or she could it put by her bedside where she’s reading a book on how to create unemployment in an economy which is undergoing a mining boom.” Imagine those lines delivered in parliament.

Meanwhile, Brendan’s still truckin’…

Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says all decision-makers should spend 12 hours in a truck to understand the issues long-distance drivers face.

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/nelsontruck.jpg"