Mark Steyn: The One Big Thing (Why Dubya, Tony Blair and John Howard are winners)

One reason I was looking forward to Election Day 2004 was so I could stop being viciously partisan. I loved Campaign 2000, couldn’t wait to get up each morning and do another dozen cheap cracks about Al Gore’s earth tones, inventing the Internet, being “raised” on a “farm.” But my heart wasn’t really in it this time round. Oh, to be sure, John and Teresa were a veritable production line of great material — going into Wendy’s and inquiring what “chili” was, etc. — but, to be honest, I was going through the motions. It seemed unworthy of the epic times in which we live to beat up John Edwards. I longed to put aside the ketchup-heiress gags and get back to the great geopolitical sweep of history.

I assumed the Democrats felt the same. But evidently they don’t, as was made painfully clear by their decision to mark inauguration week by getting Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden to do their bad cop/bad cop routine on Condi Rice. I’m loath to admit it, but one of the dopier sentences of my entire oeuvre was some mawkish pap written in the days after 9/11 saluting the sturdy Biden, the rock of Delaware, for his robust support of the president. He reverted to his usual showboating poltroonery about ten minutes after the first edition hit the streets. What the hell was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking that the justice of our cause was so obvious that it wouldn’t be a party thing. And, even though I was introduced on NPR the other day as a “notoriously toxic conservative,” I still don’t feel I’m the one being partisan. If I lived in Britain, I’d vote for Tony Blair’s Labour party. Yes, yes, I know he’s a nanny-state control-freak and you can hardly pull your pants on in the morning without filling in the form for the Public Trouser Usage Permit and undergoing inspection from the Gusset Regulatory Authority. But on the One Big Thing — the great issue of the age — he’s right, and he’s reliable. And, sad to say, the British Conservative party isn’t. Their leader, Michael Howard, has been a cheesy opportunist on the war, supporting it at the time, backtracking later, his constantly evolving position twisting itself into a knot of contortions even John Kerry might find over-nuanced. Most other Tory heavyweights — ex-Thatcher cabinet ministers like Lord Hurd and Sir Malcolm Rifkind — are more straightforward: They’re agin the war. They’d have no time for his frightful American clothes or his ghastly hamburger diet, but, social distaste aside, they’re Michael Moore Conservatives.

One reason I was looking forward to Election Day 2004 was so I could stop being viciously partisan. I loved Campaign 2000, couldn’t wait to get up each morning and do another dozen cheap cracks about Al Gore’s earth tones, inventing the Internet, being “raised” on a “farm”. But my heart wasn’t really in it this time round. Oh, to be sure, John and Teresa were a veritable production line of great material – going into Wendy’s and inquiring what “chili” was, etc – but, to be honest, I was going through the motions. It seemed unworthy of the epic times in which we live to beat up John Edwards. I longed to put aside the ketchup-heiress gags and get back to the great geopolitical sweep of history.

I assumed the Democrats felt the same. But evidently they don’t, as was made painfully clear by their decision to mark inauguration week by getting Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden to do their bad cop/bad cop routine on Condi Rice. I’m loath to admit it, but one of the dopier sentences of my entire oeuvre was some mawkish pap written in the days after 9/11 saluting the sturdy Biden, the rock of Delaware, for his robust support of the President. He reverted to his usual showboating poltroonery about ten minutes after the first edition hit the streets. What the hell was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking that the justice of our cause was so obvious that it wouldn’t be a party thing. And, even though I was introduced on NPR the other day as a “notoriously toxic conservative”, I still don’t feel I’m the one being partisan. If I lived in Britain, I’d vote for Tony Blair’s Labour Party. Yes, yes, I know he’s a nanny-state control-freak and you can hardly pull your pants on in the morning without filling in the form for the Public Trouser Usage Permit and undergoing inspection from the Gusset Regulatory Authority. But on the One Big Thing – the great issue of the age – he’s right, and he’s reliable. And, sad to say, the British Conservative Party aren’t. Their leader, Michael Howard, has been a cheesy opportunist on the war, supporting it at the time, backtracking later, his constantly evolving position twisting itself into a knot of contortions even John Kerry might find over-nuanced. Most other Tory heavyweights – ex-Thatcher cabinet ministers like Lord Hurd and Sir Malcolm Rifkind – are more straightforward: They’re agin the war. They’d have no time for his frightful American clothes or his ghastly hamburger diet, but, social distaste aside, they’re Michael Moore Conservatives.

John Howard down under is more congenial, but I wouldn’t say he’s my kind of conservative – he’s a complete wuss on gun rights, for example. Yet, like Blair, he gets the One Big Thing.

Is there a pattern here? Howard was supposed to be in trouble in last fall’s election, but he won big. Bush was supposed to be in trouble up until about 7pm Eastern on November 2nd, but he too won big. Blair was supposed to be in trouble over his “lies” on the war, but in the British election, likely to come in May, he’s now set for another landslide. Iraq, we were assured by all the commentators, was an electoral liability, and so it was – for the opposition parties. It’s not just that the US Democrats and the Australian Labor Party lost, and the British Tories are about to lose, but it’s the manner of the loss. Six months ago, Mark Latham was the great white hope of the Australian left. Now he’s quit on health grounds. As The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tony Stephens reported, not entirely felicitously:

“He had said of John Howard at Labor’s campaign launch only 16 weeks ago: ‘I’m ready to lead. He’s ready to leave.’ He had said that he had fire in his belly and that, at 43, he was in the prime of his life. Now he is leaving while Howard continues to lead. The fire in his belly has been doused by his pancreas, the large organ behind his belly.”

But, with Latham gone, the Labor Party is a bar no-one wants to belly up to. The likely new leader is a returning old leader, Kim Beazley, just as the British Tories, currently on their third leader in four years, keep having to bring back old-timers from the ever more distant past, and the Democrats are apparently talking about repealing the 22nd Amendment so that Bill Clinton can run again. In all three parties, there’s a conspicuous lack of fresh talent. That’s one reason Barack Obama gets all the magazine covers. He seems a perfectly affable fellow, but the notion that he can singlehandedly rescue the Democrats is ridiculous.

These parties have no new talent because they have no new ideas. In Britain, Michael Howard brought over from Australia Lynton Crosby, the consultant behind John Howard’s four election victories. Mr Crosby doesn’t seem to be impressed by what he’s found – or as the headline in The Times of London put it, “Election Is Lost Already, Top Advisor Tells Howard”.

For good or ill, Bush, Blair and Howard are all transformative figures: they’ve remade their political landscapes and driven their opponents into loopy, self-inflicted death spirals. All the Democrats needed last November was their own Tony Blair – on the war, tough, moral and credible, and a big pantywaist on health, education and the rest of the touchy-feely stuff. The story of this election season – from Canberra to Washington to Westminster – is that candidates who engage seriously with the central challenge of the age can see off their opposition, whether left or right.

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