Attributes of political leaders

On various threads on this blog I’ve expressed my admiration for Paul Keating. Commonly, someone will respond that they don’t share my view, because they think Keating was arrogant. I then reply that a political leader is there to deliver outcomes, and that his/her personal attributes are of no relevance.

Well, I’ve been thinking more about this lately, and I’ve discovered that I don’t actually believe that. I do believe that something as minor as arrogance is irrelevant, but I am greatly concerned when political leaders have major character flaws. The most readily identifiable flaw I can think of is adultery. Bob Hawke, Bill Clinton, and Harold Holt are/were all known adulterers, and I recall that several other of our Prime Ministers are in the same category. As it happens, I think Hawke and Clinton did good things for their respective countries with regard to domestic policies. But to what degree was that offset by the poor personal example that was set?

In this vein, some may recall President Hinckley appearing on ‘Larry King Live’ in 1998. Larry King asked President Hinckley about the Clinton impeachment issue, and he responded, in part: “it’s my feeling that you cannot divorce private behavior from public leadership.”

I don’t have any firm opinion on this issue. I know I don’t personally think much of Hawke and Clinton, but clearly they did a lot of good as well. I’d be interested to hear what other think about weighing up the personal attributes of leaders against their public abilities.

(On a sidenote, and in contrast to the above, Keating was a staunch family man. Sadly, the marriage has since broken down, but it’s clear to me that he caresd a great deal about his family. Another reason why I like Keating.)

The Migration of Catholics to the Liberal Party

Tony Abbott has a fantastic opinion piece in today’s SMH, titled ‘Migration has put the DLP in the Howard camp’. People may remember some previous posts where I talked about the Labor Split, where many Labor Catholics went to the Democratic Labor Party, but over the past few decades have moved onto the Liberal Party. Abbott takes up this issue. I’d suggest reading the whole piece, but below are some excerpts:

The takeover of the Labor Party by secular humanists and the increasing influence of Catholics inside the Liberal Party are among the biggest changes of the past half century. Santamaria resisted the former and doubted the effect of the latter, but was intimately connected with both.

…..

In the mid-1970s, Kim Beazley snr famously said he’d joined a parliamentary Labor Party that was the “cream of the working class” but was leaving one that was the “dregs of the middle class”. In 2004 Lindsay Tanner declared Labor was the “party of the socially progressive secular society”.

At the swearing in of members of the present Parliament, no fewer than 30 of 60 Labor MHRs took an affirmation rather than an oath on the Bible (compared to one from the Coalition). Kevin Rudd has tried to buck the trend by describing himself as a “Christian socialist” but, so far, it’s been a politically correct Christianity.

…

In the mid-’80s, Santamaria declined requests to encourage his supporters to join the political party of their choice and to improve it because, he said, both big parties were beyond redemption. Labor, he thought, was enslaved to the unions and the Liberals captured by business.

…

The Howard Government has overturned euthanasia laws, banned gay marriage, stopped the ACT heroin trial, encouraged independent schools, contracted Job Network services to church organisations, established pregnancy support counselling and improved the absolute and relative financial standing of families with children.

…

A key difference between the Government and many of its opponents is that its senior members think the values of the Ten Commandments are common sense as much as religious dogma.

Santamaria was too sentimental about unions ever to have backed Work Choices but would have fully supported the strengthened alliance with the US. For the last decade of his life, he hoped against hope to see a new conservative movement based on the Nationals, traditionalist Liberals and the mostly Catholic Labor Right. The political migration of so many Catholics suggests the Democratic Labor Party is alive and well, after all, and living inside the Howard Government.

Now, I consider myself quite non-partisan, as there’s a lot I like in both parties. But I find Abbott’s piece very persuasive that the Liberals have become a more natural home, on balance, for Christians. But I think that’s more a case of the ALP becoming secular at a rapid rate, rather than the Liberals becoming especially friendly to Christians.

But as I’ve mentioned before, my ideal outcome would be much that like that desired by Santamaria – a new party for social conservatives who are roughly centre-right on economic policy.

Is the ‘War on Terror’ a war?

Below is a guest post from Brucifer:

There was an article in yesterday’s Guardian (UK), titled ‘There is no war on terror’, that I think is worthy of our consideration. The British Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken MacDonald cautions for “legislative restraint” in passing laws to deal with terrorism. Some excerpts:

The director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, put himself at odds with the home secretary and Downing Street last night by denying that Britain is caught up in a “war on terror” and calling for a “culture of legislative restraint” in passing laws to deal with terrorism. Sir Ken warned of the pernicious risk that a “fear-driven and inappropriate” response to the threat could lead Britain to abandon respect for fair trials and the due process of law.

The article continues:

He said: “London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, ’soldiers’. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a ‘war on terror’, just as there can be no such thing as a ‘war on drugs’. “The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement.”

I can see Sir Ken’s point - if new legislation were to lead to erosion of the rights of the accused, it could be a very slippery slope. It would be very easy for a corrupt government or police to ban ’subversives’ or label opposition as ‘terror suspects’.  My folks came to Australia from Chile, fleeing a military state (BTW the coup was sponsored by the CIA) where all kinds of amoral and oppressive means were used to justify the ends of ‘national unity’. 

Regarding the phrase ‘war on terror’, I think that it is incorrect to use the term ‘war’ when there is no state to declare war on.Alternatively, special laws dealing with acts of terror could be justified as they are not your run-of-the-mill crimes, and we are indeed engaged in a war on terror.

Fellow bloggers, your thoughts?

Suicide

For some reason, I grew up with the notion that suicide was akin to murder, and thus would consign a person to the telestial kingdom. Certainly, many ‘fire-and-brimstone Christians’ believe such people are off to hell, but as I’ve grown up I’ve begun to doubt it.

The big problem I have with this notion is that someone who commits suicide suicides is clearly acting irrationally, probably because of depression or some other mental condition. As such, I don’t think we can say with any degree of certainty how accountable the person is.

I decided to search lds.org for ’suicide’ and found a fantastic Ensign article (Oct ‘87) by Elder Ballard, entitled ‘Suicide: Some Things We Know, and Some We Do Not’. It’s definitely worth a read for anyone interested in the subject. Elder Ballard quotes from a range of church leaders, and seems to conclude that suicide is a pretty serious sin (since it involves taking life), but since the mental state of the person is probably not particularly healthy, only God can really judge what will happen.

How will Mormons vote after Howard?

I think it’s fair to say that all Mormons are social conservatives. That is, they’re opposed to things like abortion, gay marriage, sexuality in media, and extra-marital sex. Consequently, it seems to me that many Mormons, rightly or wrongly, naturally vote for conservative parties because they are considerably more likely to espouse these values.*

What I’m now wondering about is what will happen after John Howard retires, as the Liberal Party is likely to get less socially conservative. In fact, while reading ‘Education of a Young Liberal’ by John Hyde Page recently, I was struck by how liberal many of these moderates/small ‘l’ Liberals are on many social issues. And if we take the recent votes on RU486 on cloning as indicators of social conservatism, the next batch of Liberal leadership doesn’t look that impressive: Costello (1 of 2), Downer (1 of 2), Nelson (1 of 2), Turnbull (0 of 2). Tony Abbott was 2 of 2, but seems to have paid the price, with most commentators revising down his chances of promotion because of it.

So that would potentially leave neither of the major parties particularly conservative on social issues, which means Mormons who’ve voted conservatively as a matter of course would be faced with a far more difficult choice. Perhaps this would be an impetus for Mormons to be more engaged in the political process?

* I’m not looking to get into a discussion as to whether this is the right way to vote. Obviously it’s a quite unsophisticated way to go about it, but that doesn’t mean that the end result is wrong. On the other hand, I think it’s quite legitimate for a Mormon to vote for a socially liberal party if there are other issues at stake that they perceive to be more important and more likely to be decided at the time.

Joe Hockey on WorkChoices

Joe Hockey* has an opinion piece in today’s Australian, which I surprisingly enjoyed. He started off predictably enough, with rubbish like this: ”10 months of bumper employment growth – 200,000 jobs have been created and 80 per cent of those are full-time positions – and higher real wages exposed those charges [claims that wages and employment would fall] as little more than base scare-mongering.”

The problem here is that no-one predicted mass sackings; they just warned that the low-skilled would be more vulnerable to being sacked. So this is a bit of a straw man argument. And the fact that employment has risen strongly since WorkChoices does not mean much either. And Hockey gets a bit cute when he claims that 80% of the created jobs have been full-time. Technically he’s correct, but that’s because the ABS define full-time jobs as those that require full-time hours. Thus, casuals are in that category too. It’s quite different from the definition of full-time jobs in the traditional sense, which include annual leave, sick leave etc.

But then Hockey gets a lot better. He correctly highlights that average working hours plateaued in the late 1990s and have since fallen, which is a positive development. Of course, over the same period there has been a rise in double-income families, so families are probably no less busy.

What I found most interesting was a number of anecdotes relating to workers who have benefited from AWAs.** It seems that in a number of industries, awards were overly restrictive, and employees have welcomed the opportunity to have more flexible work arrangements. I know a lot people who read this are opposed to WorkChoices (I probably am too, on balance), but I’d highly recommend you at least read Hockey’s anecdotes before criticising the legislation.

*Joe Hockey is the Minister for Human Services and the Minister Assisting the Minister for Workplace Relations. He appears on Sunrise with Kevin Rudd every Friday, and is a leading moderate in the NSW Liberal Party. I’m not a fan – I can’t stand socially liberal Liberals.

** AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements) are agreements between an individual employer and employee, and allow a lot more flexibility and individual adaptation than awards and enterprise agreements. Obviously this can be a negative thing where the employer has more bargaining power than the employee.

Evangelicals for Mitt

A couple of commenters have drawn my attention to a blog they enjoy – http://evangelicalsformitt.com/. My understanding of the situation is that many evangelicals don’t like Mormons much, but the ones that run this blog are trying to change that, pointing out that Mitt Romney shares many of the values that are important to evangelicals.

The blog recently had a post mentioning that a judge in Canada ruled that a boy can have two mothers and a father. There are a number of problems with this:

First, it gives credence to the argument that “if everything can be marriage, pretty soon nothing will be marriage.” Logically, it can’t be any other way. That was the point, in response to the ruling, of the Catholic Civil Rights League:Once you remove it from the realm of nature and the realm of traditional moral and religious teachings, who’s going to decide how many parents a child can have? What’s so magical about three, maybe there could be more.

Check out the blog for more.

Paul Keating on politicians

Further to the last post, I finally got around to watching Paul Keating’s appearance last year on Lateline, and he had some great points to make. On the subject of why superannuation contribution rates haven’t been lifted over the past decade, as Keating had hoped:

But, you know, to get something like super through, you’ve got to crash through a lot of barriers. It’s a hard reform, it’s a very hard business and it is not for poll-driven parties. The trouble about the Liberal Party today and the Labor Party they are focused and poll-driven. I never was. I never was. But look at the things that are around. Look, we’ve had 15 years of growth, low inflation, super. These things came out of a vision of the place being better.

I’m in complete agreement. The major parties are poll-driven, and that’s the very antithesis of statesmen-like behaviour.

Phillip Adams on Politicians

Phillip Adams* wrote a great column in The Weekend Australian Magazine back in December on politicians. Some excerpts:

…pollies aren’t too popular in any Western democracy. Nor is democracy. Voters are at best detached or indifferent, at worst entirely alienated. In Britain, voter turnout has never been lower. In the US, even the President is elected by an ever smaller crowd who bother to exercise their sacred right. Here? Well, we’ve got compulsory voting. Front up or get fined…..

Around the world, irrespective of political system, one sees the same dangerous disconnect. Healthy scepticism is now carcinogenic cynicism, with the young particularly vulnerable….

Those low, low, lowest of expectations make for an apathetic public – easier to rule and to rob of hard-won civil and legal rights….

So it’s hard to see fundamental change – either here or in the US – unless the voters re-engage and start electing cleanskins….

Yet politics can aspire to a noble calling, as shown by Abraham Lincoln, FD Roosevelt and, on a good day, Winston Churchill. Locally, Ben Chifley and John Curtin deserve some credit, and I vividly recall some inspirational moments in the careering career of Paul Keating.

Our current political and planetary problems call for their ilk – for courageous leaders who actually want to lead, rather than take their cues from pollsters, shock-jocks or string-pulling donors.

Great stuff. One thing I’d add – we really need the media to come to the table. If we’re asking for politicians to act statesmen-like, we need the media to accept seriously their responsibility to inform the public, rather than sensationalise and skew so much. In particular, the tabloid newspapers and commercial television really seem to be doing very little to ensure a health democracy.

*Phillip Adams is one of Australia’s most prominent left-wingers. Despite being quite anti-religious, he’s been a Rudd backer for many years. And he holds a soft spot for the LDS Church, describing our religion as “one of the silliest ever invented”. (This was in a personal letter to a Church member).

‘Real Christians are Cultural Conservatives’

I always find Christopher Pearson’s* column in The Weekend Australian very interesting, but today’s is particularly good.  Basically, as a conservative, he’s coming in on Tony Abbott’s side of the politics/Christianity debate by pointing out that Christians should be cultural conservatives. He’s called the column Rudd needs to learn real Christians are cultural conservatives. Among other things, he calls Rudd to task for his support of the RU486 (abortion pill) bill, arguing that the bible explicitly denounces chemical abortion.

This column follows some articles/opinion pieces/letters to the editor this week that suggest that Rudd’s ’brand’ of Christianity is much more appealing than Abbott’s. But I don’t find that at all surprising, since Rudd shies away from the controversial issues, like abortion and homosexuality. Christianity is unequivocal on such matters, and given how widely these things are practised by the Australian public, Abbott holding firm is going to offend a lot more people**. While I agree totally with Rudd that the Coalition is too focused on the market in areas of industrial relations and higher education, the fact remains that Rudd is pushing a form of ‘Christianity-lite’ when he pussy-foots around issues where the Christian message is likely to offend people.

* Christopher Pearson is a prominent conservative intellectual. He’s a committed Catholic, and previously worked as a speechwriter for John Howard.

** Some pro-life groups estimate that as many of one in three Australian women have had an abortion. That’s a lot of people you potentially offend when you denounce abortion.