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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