Back To The Future
12 February 2008
Reading MySpace friend Pirate’s excellent blog Even Bigots have Freedom Of Speech I realised that watching the Obamination of America I get a déjà vu feeling vis-à-vis the “Ruddicalisation” of Australia that culminated last November with the election of a “Hollow Man” one Mr. Kevin Rudd to be the Prime Minister of this country for three years.
The parallel between Rudd and Obama is astounding; Both relatively new to their political position, both have attempted to “re-right” their biography to portray a more “suitable” story, both targeted the young voters with bumper sticker slogans and whilst one will not wear the American Flag on his lapel, the Australian Flag stood out in its absence in all Labor Party campaign ceremonies.
There must be a school for socialist aspirants to the highest position in the land in which students recite the “how-to-do” manual in the morning parade, immediately after singing The Internationale.
Just imagine Barack Obama get elected as the president, lightly hops on the White House steps, clapping hands and chanting yes we can …. And then what?
My guess is that he would be lost; Obama, who is a junior senator, has never held an executive or an administrative position in his life is now seeking to become the most powerful man on earth; making him the Commander in Chief is akin to putting a man who has never driven as much as a car, with automatic transmission, behind the wheel of a 12-gears-transmission, 18-wheeler semi-trailer and expect him to drive it proficiently.
My suggestion to my American friends is to go back to the future. What I mean by that is watch America’s future Obamination through the Australian current Ruddicalisation. It might give you a guide on the answer to the “then what” question.
With the notable exception of industrial relations, climate change and “me too-ing” our former Prime Minister, Mr. John Howard, Kevin Rudd was elected on a sleek promotion campaign that included bumper stickers, Kevin07 tee-shirts, YouTube and empty slogans such as “working families”, “fresh ideas”, “embrace the future” and the like.
Senator Obama follows the same script almost to the letter.
Having won the election the very first Ruddical (or should I say “Ruddish”) act of our newly elected PM was to save the planet by ratifying the Kyoto protocol, a symbolic act which its timing has nothing to do with its ranking of importance (if you believe in that nonsense) but it had all to do with the fact an international conference on climate change was in progress in Bali when Rudd took office, a “not to miss” opportunity for Kevin’s applauded appearance on the world stage.
The second most important “achievement” of our new PM was to divide the nation and say “sorry” to the Aboriginal people for something that happened (or not) a few generations ago and to the left wing imaginary-cross generation guilt conscious we all must have. How much “reconciliation” such apology will bring is a matter of conjecture, but a good distraction from our real problems it certainly is.
I don’t know what would be Obama’s first action, if elected, but I grant you this: it will be a stunt, just as symbolic and just as meaningless.
With the opening of parliament this week the pattern of the Ruddicalisation is emerging, which is governed by stunts. Within the first week of Parliament sitting, Mr. Rudd announced that parliament will sit on Fridays but without government ministers (himself included) thus there will be no Question Time on Fridays.
Having just won a $100,000 increase in salary the new Prime Minister (who is married to millionaire wife), also announced this week that there will be no increases in parliamentarian salaries for the next 12 months, another “anti-inflation measure”.
For the 12 months prior to his election, we heard the then leader of the opposition, Mr. Rudd, calling himself an economic conservative whilst acknowledging the accomplishments of the government of the day in term of a robust Australian economy. During the campaign Kevin07 had never criticized the Howard government for any of their economic policies – not even once! Instead he campaigned on undisclosed fresh ideas ,embracing the future and supporting working families, a term he plagiarised from an American Democratic election campaign.
Had you expected that after 70 days in office, Mr Rudd would have revealed what are his fresh ideas, you would be greatly disappointed. Instead, Kevin Rudd is going to invite one thousand (1,000) of the brightest minds in the country to convene in the Australia 2020 Summit and to come up with policy suggestions for the country. What has happened to Kevin07’s fresh ideas? Did he forget them, or, more likely he had never had any to start with. Obviously it was just another one of his rhetorical campaign stunts.
I am not sure whether “2020” refers to the year 2020 or to hindsight vision of 20/20, in any event the list of invitees includes the usual suspects whose views are well known to agree with Kevin’s and with Labor Party policies. Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne Herald-Sun hit the mark by naming this charade as The Charge Of The Bright Brigade.
Kevin07 now has to deal with it as continuing increases of interest rates by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) as a precautionary measure of, what the RBA sees as, coming inflationary pressures following the election of a Labor government; it reminds us all of the previous hard Labor terms we served (under Whitlam, Hawke and Keating) – if indeed inflation will materialised and interest rates continues to rise, it may well cost Kevin the next election which is due in just under 3 years.
The new Rudd government has quickly moved into immediate anti-inflationary measure and appointed a committee to count pencils and staplers and report to the PM himself, citing the Howard government “mismanagement” of the economy, 10 consecutive budget surplus produced by the Howard government notwithstanding.
(By contrast, in the last 30 years, only one budget surplus was produced by a Labor government, that was Paul Keating’s 1989/90 budget).
Hey mister, nothing much has changed since your election campaign, you knew what you were getting into, remember? Further, you were going to stop the blame game, remember? You said that you will take responsibility, remember? So stop whining and do what you suppose to do, GOVERN!
Wake up America, put down that Cool-Aid.
Tags: kevin rudd, kevin07, obama, US
[…] “achievements” of our hollow man whilst you were busy with your elections, a sort of Back To The Future, as I dubbed it at the […]