The Triumphant Trio

This is a really good article from a writer down under, a bit lengthy but well worth the read.

Howard, Bush and Blair have all secured new terms, though many said they couldn't, writes Gerard Henderson.

It seemed like a reasonable scenario at the time, to many a commentator. The Economist's cover story on March 20, 2004, was headed: "One down, three to go?" The magazine, which supported the invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq by the coalition of the willing (the US, Britain and Australia, with the public backing of Spain), was commenting on the defeat of Jose Maria Aznar's government in Spain. Its editorial team expressed the view that there was "now a real possibility" that George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard "could follow Mr Aznar's party into defeat", due to the unpopularity of the Iraq commitment in Western nations.

Just over a year later, Bush, Blair and Howard are all still in place. Howard and then Bush were re-elected with increased support late last year, and Blair has held on in Britain despite a 5 per cent swing against Labour. Blair-haters in Britain have rejoiced in the decline in the Labour vote. Tariq Ali, the editor of New Left Review, has said this is the best possible result for those who oppose Britain's commitment in Iraq.

Yet Blair is the first Labour leader to win three successive elections, and Labour's likely majority of 66 seats in the House of Commons has been exceeded on only three occasions since the end of World War II - by Blair himself in 1997 and 2001, and by Margaret Thatcher and the Tories in 1983. If Britain had Australia's preferential voting system, it is likely that Labour would have achieved a comfortable lead in the total vote (that is, after the distribution of preferences) over the Conservatives.

Bush's term expires in January 2009. Blair has announced his intention to step down as prime minister during this parliamentary term (which expires no later than May 2010), and Howard may or may not retire as prime minister before the next Australian election (which is likely to be held in late 2007).

That none of them has suffered Aznar's fate says a lot about the personal conviction and political courage of Bush, Blair and Howard. But it also tells us plenty about voters in America, Britain and Australia.

A majority of electors in the US, Britain and Australia have not embraced the critique that their leaders are unscrupulous liars who deserve personal rejection and political defeat. In Australia this line was run by Raimond Gaita in Quarterly Essay (Issue 16, 2004), titled "Breach of Trust: Truth, Morality and Politics". An extract of Gaita's essay was published in the New Matilda online magazine. Both publications engage in ritual, and (boringly) predictable, criticism of the Howard Government.

Gaita, who was educated in Australia, is a professor of philosophy at King's College at the University of London and at the Australian Catholic University. He acknowledges that his essay was "written as a philosopher" and that "most of it" is "abstract and highly discursive". You can say that again. Yet his message is unambiguous: namely, that Bush, Blair and Howard are not only "mendacious" but "victims of their own mendacity". From his philosopher's chair, Gaita opines that it is "incredulous" that a majority of Americans re-elected Bush last November, and that in the federal election last October "Australians lost contact with political reality".

Gaita sees a "serious division between people on the liberal left and most other Australians about the place of international law, particularly the role it may legitimately have in limiting sovereignty". He also maintains, without any supporting evidence, that "the electorate seems more estranged from politics than ever before". This is a projection of the views of Gaita and his "liberal left" colleagues on to the society in which they live. If the electorate is as estranged from politics as he imagines, he should explain how it has come to pass that Americans, Britons and Australians have re-elected incumbent governments.

At the conclusion of his essay, Gaita rages that "concern about truth in politics - especially over the past few years - has not just been over the lies politicians have told, or just over whether politicians are now worse people than they were in the past; it has not been just over a decline in standards, but also over the fact that many politicians now seem not even to acknowledge the standards".

If Gaita demands such standards of others, he should be able to pass a credibility test himself, without qualification. He does not achieve such a standard in his contribution to the Quarterly Essay series. For example, on three occasions he refers to the coalition of the willing as a "Christian triumvirate". This overlooks that supporters of the Bush/Blair/Howard policy on Iraq included Christians, Jews and Muslims, along with other believers, agnostics and atheists. Also, Gaita maintains that it is not hard "to understand why a government that incarcerates children behind razor wire should inspire something close to loathing". This overlooks that there were more children of asylum seekers held in mandatory detention under the Keating government than there are now. Yet there is no evidence of Gaita having directed any loathing at the Labor administration at the time.

The recent successes of Bush, Blair and Howard suggest that a majority of the electorate has a better understanding of the complexity and demands of modern democratic governments than the liberal left, including philosophers like Gaita. That's why governments in the US, Britain and Australia have been returned - despite many predictions to the contrary.

From The Sydney Morning Herald.