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

[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.