Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for June, 2008
You Can’t Win ‘Em All
11 June 2008
Abraham Lincoln made an observation about politicians’ ability to fool people.
The same thing can be said about their ability to please people.
In the last couple of days we’ve had quite some response to the deeds of politicians. Leland has written a blog response that likens Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler. JohnyQ has some criticism of the Aussie PM Kevin Rudd, saying he is basically a waste of space.
It appears that Barack Obama’s most unpopular move has been his willingness to speak with the leadership in Iran. Certainly Leland seems unhappy about it. He also seems to find a significance in Obama’s middle name.
Being a politician is never an easy thing. You will be judged for everything you do both in public life and in private. There will always be people who will see conspiracies where politicians have simply been incompetent. Incompetency is bad enough, but conspiracy to dupe the public is intolerable. Look at the Clintons. The Clinton presidency was rife with controversy. Women, Whitewater and cigars kept the American eyes off the reforms that the Clintons tried to enact. It was not a happy time. JFK’s presidency is remembered more for Marilyn Monroe and Dealey Plaza than for his civil rights improvements.
I was once asked if I was interested in politics. Are you kidding? No amount of pension is going to be worth all that.
Actually, there are plenty of people who are in politics to do good. They work long hours, grow older by the day, never see their families and rarely get the changes in law that they ache for.
They still do it. They keep fighting.
I’m not saying we should go easy on them. Only a fool will let politicians have their own sway.
What I am saying, as a former political reporter, is that I’ve found that they are mostly trying to do something good. The charlatans are found out quick enough.
Western Democracy is hugely imperfect. It is not representative. The person that just under half of the population votes for doesn’t get in office. And the pollies listen to talkback complaints before they listen to their constituents.
Somewhere in that system, politicians are trying to make life better. Those that aren’t should be shown the door. In meantime, do we need to be mean?
- Phil
Kevin Rudd’s Big Idea. Everyone Loves it. And Hates It.
6 June 2008
The Australian Prime minister Kevin Rudd came to power six months ago on a promise of fixing things up.
He worked pretty quickly, apologising to our indigenous people about past injustices; liberalising the industrial relations system; signing the Kyoto Protocol; holding an ideas summit.
He’s also been working extraordinary hours (probably trying to wade through all those brilliant ideas thought up at the summit).
The other day he came out with his first big idea. The PM wants to have a European Union-style community in the Asia-Pacific region.
Now this idea is not hugely surprising considering the PM’s interest in the region. He was a diplomat in Beijing, speaks mandarin, and is always been a world community kind of person. And with the problems that Pacific nations will face with food shortages and climate change, you can see why he would want to be a bigger brother.
There are a few ‘buts’ with his idea though.
As a phrase, ‘the Asia-Pacific community’ rolls off the tongue pretty easily, but we are dealing with a group of nations that are the most varied for one part of the world. We have developing countries with the most developed. We have east, west and in-between. We have Muslim, Christian, Catholic, Buddhist and Hindu mixing with traditional religions. We have more language groups almost than there are languages. When you think about the middle east with the few religions and outlooks, the Asia-Pacific region is certainly unique.
This is recognised by one of our most outspoken former prime ministers, Paul Keating, who himself dearly wanted engagement with the region. Even he says the Asia-Pac Community would not work. He says too many of the countries involved would not give up the slightest bit of their power to be part of a greater organisation. China, he says, took 350 years to gain its sovereignty. It’s not about to cede any of that to an idea by an Australian who might be gone in two and a half years.
There was a discernible whoosh in this country as the scope of the idea was revealed. This is no flippant promise. This is something that would take engineering. Australians in general love grandiose plans. They could see the merits of a community are many. It would protect; it would help close the development gap between this region’s countries. Others though think the PM is just trying to distract from ther economic contraction that is only just starting to hit. And from petrol prices.
The job is now Kevin Rudd to use that renowned diplomacy to convince China and Japan that their communities would benefit from the idea as much as Kiribati.
- Phil
Barack Obama Gets There
5 June 2008
Yes, he’s there.
On this (ironically) saddest day in American history, the first black presidential nominee wakes up to a place in history.
The sadness is of course that this is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. I was a child at the time, but it seared into me. This killing was an image of my life. Bobby Kennedy mortally wounded on the floor of the kitchen in the Ambassador Hotel, having just gone through one of the high moments of his life, and appearing to be charging towards the Democratic nomination.
Like Barack Obama, he was a man of vision. Like Barack Obama, he had prejudices against him that would never be overcome. But like Barack Obama, he was a man who knew how to communicate.
America changed on that day, just as America changed after yesterday’s victory by Barack Obama.
The question is now about Hillary Clinton. Now the inevitable has happened, she says she needs to think about whether to concede. Most of the world is credulous at this. Her stance is a little like Chelsea saying that it is thinking about whether to admit that Manchester United is the English football premier.
There’s no consideration about it.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Hillary Clinton is thinking about whether to go for the Vice-presidential nomination. And that’s where chickens come home to roost. She was pretty heavy about Barack Obama during their stoush. Who can forget the line: “Shame on You Barack Obama”.
Of course all it takes for them to get together is for both sides to genuinely praise each other and to get together as a real team.
But the truth is that Barack Obama is the canniest politician America has seen since Bill Clinton. He will consult the polls. He will talk widely. He will consider all the options. He will know the electoral waters before he decides on a running mate. And the running mate he will choose will be simply the one that is most likely to get him into the White House.
And thanks to JJ Neal for correcting my erroneous geography from yesterday’s blog. Cheers mate.
- Phil
An Historic Day. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
4 June 2008
Doing a live program like the Breakfast Club means you go live with the news as it happens.
Here in Australia we are 18 hours ahead of eastern America, which is where the action has been happening in Montana and South Dakota. Hillary Clinton has been rolling her dice for the last time, trying to become the Democratic presidential nominee.
When we started the show, the rumour mill had it that Barack Obama was across the line. Local television here in Australia proclaimed he was the winner, even after they did a live cross to a reporter with the Obama camp who said no they weren’t quite there yet.
Five minutes into the show came the confirmation that Obama only needed 16.5 candidates. Ten minutes later it moved to only 12 candidates., Then came the news that Hillary Clinton is supposed to have been making overtures to be Obama’s vice-presidential running mate.
Now comes the real challenge for Obama and Clinton. It is pretty obvious that they will be running mates.
The concern about a Obama-Clinton ticket is that their campaign of sniping and fighting might weaken the unity such a ticket would need, in order to take on the incumbent Republicans.
It all comes down to how they publicly accept each other after this particularly rancorous campaign. If Barack Obama praises the former first lady’s determination, drive and personal power as the kind of asset his white house cherishes; and if Hillary Clinton publicly acknowledges that she gave it all but was beaten by stronger candidate, a candidate she would be proud to serve with, then, and only then, will they be able to overcome whatever the Republicans throw at them.
They need to be a team, and seem to be a team.
America is within grasp of its first black president, and its first woman to hold office in the West Wing. Together they will give John McCain a fight that no presidential campaign has ever seen.
And we’ll report it all. Buckle your seat belts.
- Phil
Morris Gleitzman, Children’s Author
3 June 2008
Mr Gleitzman is extraordinary.
He writes for kids, but he doesn’t go for the typical ‘running through the field of daisies with your dog and stumbling on a secret passageway to another world’ type of story.
He writes about true events, and terrible true events at that.
His latest book, called “Then” is about two children running away from Nazis after being put on one of the death trains headed for a concentration camp in the second world war.
Now this might seem rather depressing, but in a strange way it isn’t. Even though one of their friends dies on the first page, the pace of the book, and the voice of the narrator has that children’s openness that the horrors never seem to make reading the book difficult.
It is an education to every child who reads these books. In these days when Nazi revisionists are suggesting that the holocaust never happened, fiction like Gleitzman’s is ensuring that children know the truth.
Through history there have been horrors that we will never know about. The middle ages are documented. The terrors of the Spanish Inquisition for one. But it makes you wonder just how much has been forgotten or historically changed in the way that the modern neo-Nazis would like to have happen to the truth of the murders of the Jews.
It did happen, and will not be forgotten, because of the likes of Morris Gleitzman.
So what was Morris Gleitzman like? Is he a serious dude?
Not a bit of it. he has all the traits of a man who is happy-go-lucky, with a great ability to cast of the demons of the subject he writes about.
The subject is horrible, but the man was a joy.
Thanks Morris.
