Since being elected on the basis of creating a "relaxed and comfortable" Australia, and proudly claiming title as the most conservative Liberal leader, he's done everything in his power to dull public interest in politics. Since Labor awoke the country from its crippling slumber, Liberal policy has been a seductive lullaby - offering the familiar, the predictable, the mediocre.
Labor's push for a Republic and leadership in the region is frozen, if not destroyed; we've become the followers we've always been - deputy sheriffs to great and powerful friends.
Instead of being up-front about his views on issues such as the environment and immigration, like Thatcher may have been, he found a mask in 1996 and has rarely been seen without it since.
Manning Clark's two classes of people; the enlargers of life and the punishers or straighteners - the lovers and others - accuratley placed Howard in the latter class. His reforms largely revolve around school-boy stamp-your-feet ideology rather than true national interest.
Like Menzies before him, he prefers to rule rather than govern; To be popular amoung the electorate, or the U.S, rather than be a true leader.
Rather than point to an optimistic future, he clings to a grim view of the past - trotting the globe to be apart of any greiving, any mourning, anything that paints the present as something to be content with.
Even though Australians and the silly state of the Labor party are not without blame, no matter where you look at it - from the left or right - Howard is not inspirational.
. So what's your interest in this case? Just the usual? Your a wog.. Towely?? What?
