News Poll recently released some buzzword assessment polling of the relative merits of the two federal party leaders. One of the words assigned to John Howard was 'arrogant', which has lead to some bemusement among the punditariat. This blog piece by Matt Price was typical, and similar themes were voiced in yesterday's episode of The Insiders.
I'll grant that Howard doesn't have the in-your-face arrogance of a Keating, or even a Costello. On the other hand, you don't become Prime Minister without a healthy degree of self regard, and, personally, I think Howard is as well endowed (in that respect) as any leader we've had in my lifetime. I guess that the punditry confusion comes from the Howard shtick, where he presents himself as the quintessence of ordinary, averageness distilled into a balding dag in a Vodaphone tracksuit. I've always felt that this presentation had a Uriah Heep quality to it, where an excessive humility and underplaying of his own strengths is a king of arrogance in itself. Take, for example, his much repeated refrain that he would remain as leader of the party and the country (in order of importance I think) for as long as his party wanted him. So the play is that he's a servant of the party (and by extension the nation), that he's almost forced to continue the role simply because his party is demanding it of him. But of course, you know damn well that he also thinks that he's the best person to lead both his party and the country. Remember that during the long years of the Hawke/Keating governments he was prepared to rip his own party to shreds to achieve this goal.
Howard also seems to be much admired among conservatives for being a conviction politician. Someone who's prepared to do what's right, even if it is unpopular. So the stance on the GST and the Iraq war are, perversely, strengths even though both have been generally unpopular policies. I think there's merit in this argument, and that the electorate probably is prepared to respect a leader who has the courage of his convictions, even if they don't actually agree with his policy. But I think any leader who wants to take this path has to do several things. They have to actually mount a case that the policy is actually in the best interests of the nation, even if it is unpopular. They have to listen and engage in debate, to try and take the people along with them. If they don't do this, then the flip side of conviction is arrogance, a leader who knows better than the people, who won't listen to what people are telling him. Paul Keating, obviously, ended up well into this territory by the end of his term of office. To consistently play this card, it also helps a lot if the leader is consistently right.
I think Howard risks falling into this trap, and that this is what the polling is picking up. Iraq has always been unpopular, but over the years it's become more apparent that Howard's picked a loser. To my mind, he's also never actually articulated a case for Australia being involved in Iraq. Similarly with workchoices. It's damn unpopular in the electorate, and the government, and Howard, has simply not tried to present a case for it. Again it's a similar story with climate change, where the government has spent the last decade twiddling its thumbs, waiting for a mugging from reality. At some point, it you spend enough time telling the electorate that you know best, without offering convincing explanations as to why this is so, then the electorate stops listening and the word arrogant, justifiably in my opinion, starts getting applied.
