Die Another Day

You are obviously not going to win an election with headlines like that, Mr Howard. As Peter Hartcher said earlier today:

He told ABC radio on Monday he realised he had spent too much time telling people about the achievements of the Government, but not enough time setting out his plan for the future.

When asked for his plan, however, he demurred...

Howard must set out a cohesive, workable plan to take it to the election and claw back a 14-point deficit in the opinion polls. It must be a plan that gives the Government a credible chance of winning.

And Howard must present it this morning.

But Howard's got nothing left to offer except blind ambition. Instead of sharing his glorious vision of the future, Yesterday's Hero is busy defending his leadership, a position which he always promised to relinquish if asked. Obviously, that was yet another "non-core promise".

So why (O why!) did he NOT go, when it is now so blindingly obvious that both the country and his own party want him gone? In his own words today:

"It's alien to my nature."

Me, me, me... sigh!

So the nation must endure at least three more long months of Howard, just to sate his over-inflated ego and over-ambitious wife. So tell us, John, what do you have to offer?

"I've got a lot of energy, I've got a lot of ideas, I've got a lot of enthusiasm and I'm really dedicated to winning."

Yes, my 11-year-old is also really redicated to winning - but that does not make him a suitable Prime Minister, does it?

Howard cannot articulate a plan for the future because, as we all know by now, his real plans are so God-awfully repugnant that they cannot even be mentioned...

Howard wants to make WorkChoices even more harshly pro-business. He wants Australia involved in even more pre-emptive Oil Wars overseas. He wants even closer ties to the sinking US economy and the morally bankrupt neoconservatives in Washington. He wants a return to the White Australia policies of the 1950's. He wants centralized power in Canberra taking control from States and Councils alike, just like the Mandarins in Beijing. He wants closed-cicuit cameras in every street and school children saluting his picture on the wall as they open their government-approved history books.

He wants what all despots want: never to die, never to lose.

Howard is a man who is deeply familiar with fear. It has controlled his whole life, so it is little wonder that he finds it so easy to wield as a political tool. What does he most fear?

Humiliation.

Annihilation.

Oblivion.

But it is coming, John. It is coming.

There is no escaping the fate which we freely choose for ourselves.