Obama's bitchslap

[randy_byers]

Before I forget, I wanted to take a moment to admire Barack Obama's slapdown of the Australian PM, John Howard. In case you somehow missed it, Howard said in an interview that he thought Al Qaeda would be thrilled to see Obama or any other cut-and-run Democrat win the next US presidential election. Obama replied by saying that if Howard was so eager for the fight in Iraq, he might think about sending 20,000 more Australian troops to supplement the token 1400 he's committed so far. (Just how many Australian casualties have there been in Iraq, anyway?)

I haven't been able to tell how much hay the opposition leader in Australia, Kevin Rudd, has made of this exchange (I don't read the the Australian news every day), but he certainly seems to be playing it smart. He has argued that Howard is mismanaging the relationship with the US by tying himself too closely to Bush and the Republican party. Rudd has portrayed himself as someone who would be able to work well with any American administration. My impression is that Howard has been made to look like an idiot within Australia as well as to the outside world. And while Obama didn't deliver his rebuke very smoothly in the actual press conference, the substance of it was right on the mark. Well played!

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Howard is just another one of the seemingly limitless supply of world leaders who wish to look like idiots.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing about Howard's comment was that it was not an off-the-cuff one. It was clearly a considered statement delivered at the beginning of an interview. He certainly wasn't cornered into it or flustered into it so given his past record the interesting question is why make it?

Of course the lazy of mind say he's an idiot making the sort of stupid comments that idiots make but any such comment is merely a means by which somebody can have an opinion without going to the effort of thinking.

Others have suggested that this is a calculated piece of misdirection, the sort of ploy Howard has been fond of in the past. It's possible that Howard want to create a meaningless fuss while some unpleasant bill was slipped through parliament for example but I think this pretty unlikely as something like that would have to have had no public profile at all or else I'd be aware of it.

Not being part of Howard's inner circle I can only speculate as to why he said what he did, when he did. My current theory being that he wanted to interrupt the media debate on his 10 billion dollar proposal to the state governments. He'd put it forward with some fanfare (in the hopes perhaps of railroading the states into agreeing) only for it to shift into negotiation mode. Given that and the fact various people had begun to pick the plan apart and suggest that it had been very hastily cobbled togather I suspect it would suit him to have that particular arm-wrestle pushed back to page fifteen until he and the states can cut a deal.

Commenting on a foreigner nobody had ever heard of before (I actually thought Obama was a Star Trek character. Any idea of who I'm confusing him with?) in the way he did was a risk free means of puting a new story on the front page. It may have hurt the feelings of a few USians but as far as the people who count, the Australian voters, go nobody really cares. The minority who know something about politics understand that practical considerations will always override such comments (which is why Rudd has taken the stance he has despite the current US administration having made equally disparaging comments about the Labor Party in the past). The majority won't give a rats arse unless there is a possibility that Howard's actions will result in the US not allowing new episodes of CSI and Desperate Housewives to be shown here.

Anyway, the matter is dead. The debate is now on Labor shadow cabinet member, Peter Garret, and whether he supports the new US base in Western Australia or not.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the native view, as it were. Is there no resonance to Australians in Obama's pointing out that Howard's support for the Iraq war is more bark than bite -- or "empty rhetoric," as he called it? Whether you know who Obama is or not, to me it seemed another indication that the Bush-Blair-Howard heroic trio are running on empty and that their war policy has gone off the rails. People are no longer afraid of saying "bollocks" to them. Just as Bush has apparently lost the support of even parts of the military here, I wonder who in Australia supports Howard's stance on Iraq at this point.

Also, I take it that you aren't impressed with Rudd? (I did nip into The Australian website today and saw a headline for the Garrett story. Before that, I think the last big story I noticed was the Feds -- or whatever you call them -- taking control of the water in the states.)

[numbat.livejournal.com]

The vast bulk of Australians don't care about the war in Iraq and never have. It's an issue in the US because it costs so much money, causes 2/3 US servicemen to die every day, and affects the way the rest of the world views the US. In Australia the cost of Iraq is obscured by Australian involvement in East Timor, Fiji, Solomon Islands etc, it's seen as just one foreign mission amongst many. Australian casualties in Iraq number just one, in a plane crash as I recall, to date. Combine that with the relatively small Australian contingent and you can see why the general public isn't concerned about Australian troops being in danger. And finally the rest of the world isn'tr aware of the fact that AUstralia is in Iraq. There is no proof that the many USians are either. Early on in the war an Australian journalist asked a senior US officer about how the Australians were goign and was told that officer hadn't realised Australia had sent troops. I don't think Iraq is going to affect our international image. Howard can do what he likes in regards to Iraq because most voters don't consider it an issue.

Rudd is part of the new centre-right Labor party that could easily be part of Howard's Liberal party. As such I have no particular use for him or them.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, it sure seemed to me that when I was in Australia, lots of people hated the US because of the war (and Gitmo and Abu Ghraib), and thus cared about Iraq to that extent. On the other hand, Latham's "the troops will be home by X-mas" speech didn't seem to go over very well electorally.

But I feel your pain on the centre-right thing. That's why I was never able to bring myself to vote for Clinton. These days I'd happily vote for him. Considering how badly Latham and Beazley did, maybe Rudd and centre-right is all that Labor can hope for at this point. (Well, aside from controlling the state governments.)

(You know, I hadn't noticed until now that you guy's spell it "labor" too.)

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Only for the Labor party. Hard work is labour.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Okay, understanding this difference is labour for me. Was the party named at a time when you were using the non-U spelling convention for the regular meaning too, or was the party just being perverse?

[numbat.livejournal.com]

Or to put it more accurately, 'lot of people who I spent time with hated the US because of the war'. From Howard's point of view that doesn't really mean much since these are people who haven't voted for him in the past or were likely to in the future. Where it would be a concern for Howard is if had caused some of those who had voted for the government in the past to withdraw their support. I see no evidence of it doing so. Basicly to suggest this incident had any effect on Howard's popularity is to enter the realm of fantasy where Obana's reply can be described as a 'bitchslap'. (I am very tired of the bizarre and deliberately dishonest practise that occurs whenever A replies to B. Inevitably the media will automaticly describe the response as have 'slammed' etc A seemingly simply because B managed a response without regard to whether what B had to say was at all telling. This is ludicrus hyperbole invented to sell newspapers and really doesn't belong in the conversation of adults.)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Sorry that I have offended you.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

FWIW I think Rudd is less right than Beazley, on most of the things that matter. He is good at using centrist rhetoric, but I think he'll be OK.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I thoroughly agree with Obamas slapdown. And its going to really hurt Howard - macho war rhetoric alienates half the electorate, but now he just looks out of his depth, and no one likes that.

Rudd is smart. Very smart.

And the whole exchange I took as a sign of desperation, Howard is getting rattled. He is way behind in the polls - and unlike Latham, it looks to be sticking, and Rudd isn't crzy, and probably won't misstep. Howard trying to find a way to be tough on Iraq, contrast himself with Rudd, etc - and fumbling badly, because Obama was the wrong person to pick on.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

My superficial impression is that Rudd is outfoxing Howard at this point. It'll be interesting to watch how it plays out. It seems possible that, as numbat says above that Howard didn't think there'd be any domestic fall-out from dissing a mere US Senator that most Australians wouldn't have heard of, but it really does seem to have been a miscalculation.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think Rudd is playing the game a lot better than Howard in the last few months. They are trying a lot of destabilising wedge ploys that they tried against previous ALP leaders, and so far they are all being easily deflected, sometimes with serious collateral damage

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

By the way, at some point Sharee asked me to look around the web for evidence of a sequel to an Australian SF novel she'd just read, and while I didn't find a sequel, I did find that it was written by someone who turns out to be Rudd's brother. I can't remember his name now, or the title of the book, but it was the first I had heard of the politician brother.