Well not exactly. Beazley got a run in an E.J. Dionne WaPo op-ed article titled, "First Step? Admit There's a Problem" [reg req]. Neither American Republicans or Democrats have any plan for what to do in Iraq. Clarkes op-ed on the same page, on the same subject, basically says Bush has no plan . Clark then manages to not offer one in return.

Beazley reckons;

Beazley proposed the redeployment of American forces to Iraq's borders with Syria and Iran on the road to departure. At the same time, Washington needs to "refocus attention on Afghanistan," particularly the border areas with Pakistan, where he sees the real war on terrorism being waged. And the United States must turn its attention to the Iraq war's perverse effect, which has been to "advance Iranian power."

So where I differ with Beazley is that he thinks the US forces should take over the Afghan border, I reckon the Australian forces should ;

But equally influential on our policy toward Afghanistan has been the weak manner in which Australia has contributed. We are not in control of the outcome, and consequentially the Howard government is just floating along with no focus, and no possible means to take the expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq to any conclusion. Australia needs to return to the policy of December 2001, pull out of Iraq, and focus its full energies on defeating Al Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Note to John Howard and Kim Beazley, my skills in defence policy are always on the market.

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Beazley's statement on the cabinet reshuffle included the question;

What sort of reshuffle worked on for four months would leave Amanda Vanstone still in immigration?

That is an excellent question that should be answered and not side-stepped.

Bryan Palmer has a run-down on the changes . Malcolm Turnball didn't do too well from it.

Malcolm Turnbull goes from the backbench to Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with particular responsibility for water policy. I suspect the water policy Howard had in mind was to have Turnbull inside the tent, pissing out; rather than outside the tent, pissing in.

First stop Goulburn . A promotion but an impossible portfolio given Australia's dearth of water. Minchin also got a shove forward;

Senator Nick Minchin - keeps Finance and Administration - now Leader of the Government in the Senate.

Minchin is the main Liberal advocate for removing compulsory voting .

Peter Costello still has not done a Paul Keating and forced the issue with John Howard. Keating was sacked by Hawke and spent six months on the back bench before managing to wrest leadership of the Labor party from Bob Hawke. Costello seems unwilling to give up his Treasury portfolio.

Australian politics has become more and more Presidential, both as a result of the way the parties play politics and how the media represents their political theatre. The Cabinet reshuffle stage act kept several Costello supporters on the sidelines;

Addendum: Capable Costello supporters, George Brandis, Christopher Pyne, Bruce Baird, and Tony Smith were passed over when it came to the promotions. (Although Brough and Bishop have also been reported as Costello supporters, and they were big winners in this reshuffle).

I could not find any commentary on the cabinet reshuffle on the ALP website . The Liberal Party website has a complete list of changes and release from John Howard . The Australian Democrats have a spiffy looking new site , but no mention of the cabinet changes.

The Greens' have some commentary on the changes .

Greens Leader Bob Brown says that Tasmania has been snubbed in the Cabinet reshuffle.

"Eric Abetz is the new minister for forests, but it's a junior ministry - he gets the timber but not the Cabinet.

But it is not much.

I had dinner last night at the Watergate Hotel of President Nixon scandal fame. With its sharks-teeth brutalist architecture, it is hardly an awe inspiring building, but somehow it manages to retain its aura of elite status. Watergate has come to mean a series of political scandals, synonymous enough, that scandal of any kind, is promptly given the "gate" suffix. Nixon faced two years of impropriety and bad news - he left government with the claim of not being a crook. If he was in government today, he would give himself an award, if not a promotion.

It appears to be only constant bad news that affects a government's ratings. Last year while the Liberal Government was guillotining legislation through the Senate with all the arrogance of a majority party without check, their popularity dropped drastically. There was a period of two months there where there was constant bad news from the media on their actions. There was civil unrest at the Liberal Government with Unions organizing marches and rallies. But without the focus on bad news being maintained, the Liberal Government has recovered its position .

After the Katrina Hurricane debacle in the United States, the phrase, "Brownie, You're doing a heck of a job" became shorthand for willful ignorance of incompetence. This symbolic public cheerleading has become normal media relations for the Bush Administration. While head of the CIA George Tenet proclaimed it was a slam dunk that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This was deemed a suitable cassus belli to invade Iraq but nothing has been turned up by UN inspectors, the US military or even black market traders. Tenet's punishment for this incompetence? A Presidential Medal of Freedom .

It is the highest civil award that can be received in the US. Similar in status to Australia's old George Cross . Paul Bremer received his Presidential Medal of Freedom at the same time as Tenet. Bremer demobilized the entire Iraq Army leaving the US forces to shoulder law and order. Ironically, the current sound bite for victory and withdrawal is that Iraqi troops and police are going to take over from the US military.

But this is not unusual practice in modern democracies with how government's manage the media and public opinion. Australia's Prime Minister is far more deft at handling this in an ad-lib manner than George Bush - who requires stage managed speeches, pre-planned questions and rote answers to get his message across. Howard is far more comfortable chatting away in interviews, affirming his complete and utter support for his ministers while at the same time denying any knowledge, responsibility or even awareness of the issue.

The Australian Wheat Board scandal is just the latest where this media management technique has been used by the government. There appears to be political collusion, a US Ambassador heading overseas to silence an American investigation into the kickbacks until after the election sounds very political.

I doubt bureaucrats were the driving force behind that mission, or that they have the political power to motivate the US Ambassador to Australia to embark across the Pacific on such an effort. Especially one which carries potentially personal political risks. That was definitely politically motivated. As Gary Sauer-Thompson notes Michael Hawley is a Howard man .

Corruption is one of the few ways a government can lose an election, but even with corruption and incompetence present, this is often not enough. As Adam remarked in relation to Peter Beattie in Queensland, the electorate chose criminality over incompetence. Peter Hartcher notes ;

It's even possible that it [the Cole Commission into the AWB kickbacks] will be so damaging that even Howard will have to enforce unpleasant disciplinary action on his Government. But that is extremely unlikely.

This is, after all, a Government that was prepared to accept the wrongful deportation of scores of its own citizens by an Immigration Department so incompetent that Kafka's hallways looked like a model of efficiency and sanity.

The accountability? The head of the department was given an award and a diplomatic posting, and the Minister, Amanda Vanstone, retains her job.

In the Howard Government, presiding over a national disgrace is not a sacking offence.

John Howard and Kim Beazley both are deeply intimate with the Australian political process. They are products of the Waitocracy , sharing the same triple bypass that modern Australian politics requires in Prime Ministers and Opposition leaders. Beazley will be Prime Minister one-day as long as he keeps hanging on to the leadership of the opposition, his Drover's Dog election will come, just as John Howard's did. He will also win it with his small target campaign, allowing the government to lose in the same way that Howard allowed the Keating Government to lose in 1996.

Beazley is aware that it is constant bad news which depresses polling, in the same way that Howard is aware that it is absence of the constant bad news that keeps his polling support up. They are both playing the same game, Hartcher opens with Beazley's tactic for Parliament;

Kim Beazley promises that when Parliament resumes next week he will conduct "the most aggressive parliamentary interrogation this Government has faced in its 10 long years in office".

The Opposition Leader plans to turn the national disgrace of the AWB scandal into a political disaster for the Howard Government.

Mark Latham accused the members of the media being on the drip from the Prime Minister's office. But eyeballs mean profits, so what is a mass media outlet to do, it cannot pass up a scandal. If I was Beazley, I would be hoping that one of the AWB Directors was a cross-dresser, because there is nothing the media loves more than a salacious scandal involving sex. That is the political version of Brad leaving Jennifer for Angelina.

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