Like a lot of non-Americans (and quite a few Americans, I suspect), I’ve been paying closer attention to the whole Primary thing you’ve got going, where candidates fight with each other to be voted for so they can be voted for again later this year. It’s rare to see both parties having such open primary battles (no sitting Presidents or Veeps being in the running), and also rare to see such a close battle between two contenders as there is between Obama and Clinton. I don’t remember when people were so wrapped up in the primary battles, even when the elections felt like significant events with a lot at stake.

Interestingly, there have been two Western countries that have recently had once-popular conservative leaders who’ve become seriously on the nose with their constituencies. One is George Bush in the United States, and the other was John Howard in Australia. The political reconfiguring of both countries makes an interesting compare-and-contrast.

To do this, let’s start with a premise – that functioning democratic political systems are, in effect, mechanisms for handling disagreements.

Basically, since people in large numbers will never agree on all the important things, you need a process that cuts through and forces a compromise. A key way to do this is to have a means by which coalitions are created. Coalitions involve groups of (somewhat) likeminded people joining with other groups of people and finding compromises somehow.

In a parliamentary system like Australia’s, with two major parties (groups of somewhat likeminded people), you get most of the coalitioning going on behind closed doors, in the party room. There are shit-fights in Cabinet and between party factions, to decide on policies and on legislative proposals, but in front of the cameras, and in the parliament, party unity is paramount. When times are tough, the press looks for signs that party unity is fraying.

In a many-party parliamentary system, the coalitions form more publicly and they may be subject to short term volatility – another election cycle, another coalitional arrangement. This typically means that one party cannot form a majority and so must seek partners in a coalition large enough to utilize the appropriate decision-making mechanism (such as a majority vote on legislation).

In the US, coalitioning goes on all the time, out in full view – every time a Bill is before Congress, more or less. Party unity isn’t the imperative here. Congresspersons and Senators have visible voting records.

What’s also going on in full view is the election of the anointed leader. In parliamentary systems like mine, the elected representatives elect the party leader behind closed doors, and they are the one who lead their team into electoral battle. In the US, voters vote (in essence) for who they want to vote for later on.

Here’s a speculation. (I’m not championing any system over any other one, I’m just highlighting differences and their implications.) In Australia, John Howard (conservative Prime Minister and friend and ally of Bush The Younger) spent over a decade as the most powerful man in Australian politics. The opposition Labor Party threw everything it had at him, which in practice meant whatever new leader it thought could beat him in an election. In one battle after another, Howard prevailed, and the Labor Party looked forlorn and weakened. Howard, a smart, uncharismatic, practical man and clever politician, exploited national security fears while (with the considerable assistance of the Reserve Bank and a China-driven resources boom) keeping the economy ticking over healthily. While there was some sense of disquiet over some of his actions, including his rush to join the Coalition of the Willing which was not uncontroversial, and some amount of fuss was made about it, which led to one-time Labor leader Mark Latham taking the political risk of making an electoral promise to bring the Aussie troops home, it seemed like the voters in middle Australia were at least willing to tolerate this as long as the economy boomed and their house prices stayed high.

Then the Labor Party elected Kevin Rudd as leader. And around then Australians started to disengage from their disengagement strategies. The issue of David Hicks (see here, and here, and here for snippets of the Hicks story) began to seem like it mattered to average Australians.

And the polls went up for Rudd, and went down for Howard. And they stayed that way. The incumbent government became nervous and speculation of a leadership challenge was a regular feature of media discussion. And then, with Howard holding on to the party leadership by his teeth, in the November 2007 election, Howard’s government was
wiped off the map. In a final indignity, Howard even lost his own seat of Bennelong.

By contrast, in the US, we see continuing low support for the incumbent president, but who can say what that will mean a year from now. There’s no dirty-but-quick resolution behind closed doors to decide who will represent the Democrats to go in and lead a nation crying for that magical word “change”. One fear is that the public process of nominating a candidate for the Democrats will yet again go horribly wrong. Obama’s momentum is building, and polls suggest he is the best electoral bet against McCain, almost certainly the Republicans’ nomination. Maybe the Dems will sort themselves out despite everything.

But it’s instructive to see what momentum can bring when it’s not impeded. This morning in Federal Parliament, Kevin Rudd offered a statement of apology to the aboriginal stolen generations. This was something that John Howard had stubbornly resisted and resisted, so much that when they played the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Midnight Oil donned “Sorry” outfits to make their own statement.


Now, it seems the time has come for change, as crowds cheer the speech. I stood in a lecture theatre full of hundreds as we listened to each word.

It will be interesting to see whether the time has come for the United States to deal with its own mood for change. Let’s catch up a year from now and see how things went.