September 14, 2007
I was in Brisbane yesterday so I was able to escape the chaos of the Canberra hothouse, Question Time and the current spin of a 'joint leadership team' from the Howard camp to cover over the ever deepening cracks that reveal a deepening leadership crisis:

Bill Leak
The events of this horror week in Canberra, which disclosed existential terror, enframed the PM as a man of the past with a limited future. From the perspective of modern Brisbane of Beattie, Bligh and Rudd, the Coalition looks to stand for the status quo and the Australia of the past. Iraq comes to mind and so does climate change and energy.
Howard lives to fight another day and another election. Remember that Howard played these cards--call it the Tony Blair hand. Howard actually raised the leadership during APEC himself. Why so? What advantage is to be gained from going to the edge? Gaining publicity? To raise the stakes? To gain sympathy for being in the corner and on the ropes? To look Churchillian? To gain a few more years with his hand on the levers of power? It was all he had left?
All the PM then has to do is to give people a good reason to give him a couple more years before Costello steps up to take over and run the show forever. Realistic? John Hewson in The AFR reckons some of it is. He proposes that Howard can give a good reason for staying on by stealing the policy initiative and policy detail ,since Rudd 's strategy is to play small target. With 20 seats that are contestable, a good campaign by Howard and a poorer performance by Rudd gives Howard the chance he needs.
Maybe. Simon Jackman questions this. He argues in The Bulletin that:
...part of the reason the Coalition is faring poorly in the polls is precisely because voters are weighing up a Labor/Rudd versus a Coalition/Costello future, and prefer the former to the latter.As they say in the financial markets, a Costello prime ministership is "already priced in" to the poll numbers we're seeing.
It's about the future isn't it? The message is simple. Howard is leaving. His main achievements are behind him no matter how much the street fighter wrestles the demons and his enemies to hang onto power.
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gary,
Howard has been dragged kicking and screaming by political disaster to publicly acknowledge what is bleeding obvious: his time is up.