Saturday, December 27, 2008

[parallels] how the mighty fall

It's worth considering parallels in politics.

In December, 2007, John Howard not only lost an election after being the second longest serving prime minister but he also lost his safe Liberal [conservative] seat in Sydney. This put him in tandem with Stanley Melbourne Bruce, the only other PM to achieve this.

Now, it seems that a CNN poll has 75% of Americans glad to see Bush go. As they don't have the same mechanisms over there and though it is not the same thing, still, can you imagine what would have befallen him if they did have the power and precedent to vote him out?

In Howard and Bush's case, it was the Karl Rove policy. In Bruce's case, it was the unions although the Wall Street Crash was at the same time.

4 comments:

  1. Could be. But before opining on Howard's losing his seat, I'd be inclined to check whether the boundaries were changed, whether more candidates stood for election, and all that stuff. Remember it was probably mad little Mr Perot who caused Bush the Elder to lose the Presidency, not some huge resurgence of the Democrats.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You do realize that the American people did indeed have the 'power and precedent' to out President Bush; I believe he won that vote.

    There's roughly 60 million people that would vote for him outside the US and probably still 50 million inside.

    ReplyDelete

Comments need a moniker of your choosing before or after ... no moniker, not posted, sorry.