Fascinating, isn’t it? Former Prime Ministers usually don’t hold back when commenting on the current political status quo, especially at home here in Oz.
Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, Malcolm Fraser and not as often lately, but even Edward Gough Whitlam has been known to speak his mind. But not the most recent turfed out title holder, Little Johnny Howler.
Howard has been as silent as Marcel Marceau (okay, Howard’s not dead yet, but you get my drift). No comments in the press, not even a political head above the media trenches since he tried to dob in Peter Costello to lead the outcasts aimlessly around the wilderness.
But today we see and hear our very own political outcast acting just like one as he clambered onto the podium at the American Enterprise Institute for a session of glad-handing and back-slapping amongst like-minded conservative dinosaurs. Only difference between Howard and his predecessors being that they’re not backward in coming forward at home. Little Johnny clearly doesn’t have the gumption to say what he feels at home. Only in the company of fellow conservatives, foreign ones at that, where he knows he’ll be preaching to the converted and no opposing voices would be heard. Not unlike shouting into your hand.
Personally, I think it’s disappointing that Howard has chosen to break his silence and rail against the government which defeated him, in a foreign country and before an organisation which is responsible in many ways for leading America into her current malaise. That said, it is a mark of the man that he holds fast to out-dated, cold war ethics and moralistic standpoints. John Howard’s beliefs formed in the 1960’s and `70’s. He refused to look beyond those views and grow with the times. This is what ultimately brought him down. That he refuses to acknowledge that fact is proof positive of why the Australian people did the right thing, and cast him out.