Paul Sheehan writes in the SMH about what happens when people get blinded by a dislike of a political figure when the electorate doesn't like them as much in Howard haters reap a hot, bitter harvest and how the minor parties have lost a huge share of the vote in the last election.

Robert Manne writes in The Age about what he sees as Labour's Identity crisis in Labor must confront its identity crisis which has the usual identity crisis discussion that follows a political defeat.

In the New York Times Thomas Friedman has a great piece, 'Oops. I Told the Truth.' where he writes about how American politicians are not discussing the real situation and do not address their voters and talk about what they are really thinking about and how they would address serious, difficult problems.

Paul Sheehan's article in the SMH makes a very interesting point about how the minors have lost a huge share of the vote. He writes

Three years ago, in the 2001 Senate election, 1.2 million voters supported three broad-based progressive protest parties: the Democrats (620,000 votes), the Greens (569,000) and the Unity Party (25,000). Another half million feral voters opted for One Nation, which shared the anti-globalism of the Greens.


This was a large incursion into the major parties - 1.7 million votes - and it took place even before the highly charged and highly dubious invasion of Iraq.


It was an altogether different story on October 9. The progressive vote collapsed. The combined vote that had gone to the Democrats, Greens and Unity in 2001 plunged 23 per cent, to 932,000. The Democrats disintegrated. Unity did not take part in the election. On the other end of the protest spectrum, One Nation disintegrated as a protest movement.

It is quite amazing that the Liberal party has essentially removed the minor parties. Not since the Fraser government of the 1970s has an Australian government held the sort of power that the Liberals now wield. It's pretty significant.

Howard is a remarkably successful politician. The dislike he gets from the chattering classes, and the online classes in general is vastly overdone. Howard is not George Bush. He has introduced important and successful reforms and managed the economy well. He has done well in international affairs. And yet there is a body of people whose hatred for him is so strong that it makes them appear unreasonable and unbalanced. Unfortunately for the ALP such people were running their campaign and went to town over Howard's lies and have suffered the consquences.

Sheehan makes good comments about the Greens. The Greens are not that popular nor successful. Currently the Australian Greens are a personality cult coupled with an ad-hoc mixture of left wing causes de jour. They represent a considerable problem for the ALP. The media wrote extensively about how One Nation threatened the Liberals as it was suspected that they would have to pander to the right in order to sure up their flank from One Nation which would in turn alienate voters in the Center. The Greens represent the same threat to the ALP. The ALP has tamed it's own left wing of rabid unionists and hard core socialists only to have a new front open that they cannot control.

In The Age Robert Manne has one of the typical identity crisis articles. It's silly. The ALP make a number of strategic and tactical mistakes and lost an election. The odds were stacked against them to start with. People may unjustly blame politicians for the economic climate but nonetheless they do. With the economy so strong at the moment it would have been surprising if the ALP would have won. The past changes of government have all taken place close to a recession.

Manne also makes the point that an ALP government would have had no effect on interest rates. There is some reason to believe that interest rates would have risen slightly more under an ALP government than a Liberal one. Markets like reliability and stability. Latham looked like he would provide neither toward the end of the campaign when he announced major policies in a way that made them look ill considered. You also have to wonder whether the Liberal party did not attempt to engage Latham in bidding war with various Middle class benefits. Had Latham been more controlled he might have been able to resist the temptation to dole out checks and instead talked calmly about economic policies he may have been able to convince the electorate that would have handled economic issues well.

The ALP's identity crisis is true to a certain extent, but this issue that Manne calls unresolved was happily unresolved while the ALP had it's longest time ever in government.

Thomas Friedman's article, Ooops I told the Truth is a really good read. He points out the easily verified fact that both presidential candidates have no idea how to solve America's coming problem with Social Security. Bush's plan to privatize it would immediately bankrupt it and cause huge problems while Kerry's plan to ignore the problem is little better.

 In a similar vein neither candidate has said that America's huge trade embalance is not a problem or that they have some way of fixing it. Nor has either candidate said what effect that oil prices will have on the economy and how they will handle it.

 He also points out how dire the situation is in Iraq. Neither candidate really has much to offer. Kerry talks about pulling in other countries. But it is hard to believe that the Europeans will put their own troops on the line for an American, British and Israeli mistake. Could Kerry really convince the Europeans to try and seriously help in Iraq?

In the Australian election it was sad to see that neither candidate was pressed for an answer to questions about whether Australia was having a housing bubble and what could or should be done about it now and if it burt or about Australia's foregin debts.

Politics seems to come in two parts, the game of getting elected and the business of running the administration and influencing the economy and society. Unfortunately it seems that the massive increase in information via the net has not improved discourse, indeed arguably the plethora of information available means that there is even less time to grab people's attention and slam a slogan down their throats so the slogans have become more ubiquitous and reasoned discussion even scarcer. If only Latham would have tried to 'ease the squeeze' on thoughtful discourse.