Apr 042008
 

An absolutely excellent review and summation of Robert Manne’s book “Dear Mr Rudd”, byGeorge Megalogenis


While not actually canning the book, Megalogenis takes issue with it’s premise. That being a fretful plea by the intellectual Left for reassurance that the bad old days of Right dominance are over, and that they – the Left – will now assume the position of Prime Ministerial lapdog advisers, as the Windshuttles and Hendersons did during the Howard years before them.
I’m a great fan of Megalogenis. He is one of very, very few rational journalists in the country who don’t wear their ideological heart on their sleeve. He calls any given situation as he sees it, and is generally spot on with his analysis. His review of the pathetic bleating of Robert Manne in his latest tome is just such analysis. I think in his whole review, Megalogenis sums up the general thrust of the arcane culture war, Left -v- Right zeitgeist thusly,

“it must be said that the chest-beaters on the Left and Right of our national discourse are surprisingly naive in the ways of politics. They think governments run nations when, in fact, they manage them as best they can. They mistake the limits of power for cowardice and think the exercise of policy reform is an exact science.”

Never have I read a more pointed and focussed summation of the foolishness embodied in the ideological tit-for-tat we seem to read daily in what passes for informed and unbiased newspaper reporting. This man, George Megalogenis, deserves an award of his own, in my view.

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