oshlo.blogspot.com - Baby-boomer journalists have created the unshakeable impression that Billy McMahon was the worst Prime Minister ever.
They do his piping old-man voice involuntarily these days. He used to leak, they say - as though journalists hate it when pollies do that. Part of it is old-school homophobia; they were young blades then, and McMahon was a queer old irrelevance delaying the coming of Gough. For all their experience of politics they can't quite explain why, in modern parlance, McMahon 'saved the furniture': he went into the 1972 election with a surplus of seven seats and out with a deficit of only nine, which is why the Coalition were back in office under three years rather than waiting out the decade.
Because they don't do policy, they really can't explain why McMahon was so terrible. He didn't divide the country while at war, like Hughes, and nor did he faff around in the face of economic emergency and geopolitical threat like Lyons.
Even more embarrassingly, they can't explain why they thought so highly of Tony Abbott, and why all the evidence shows they were so so wrong to do so. This isn't some sudden development; Abbott was never good enough to become Prime Minister. The more experience you have covering politics, the greater your professional negligence in failing to notice that.
The comparison is stronger than you realise. The alternatives available, much less so.
They do his piping old-man voice involuntarily these days. He used to leak, they say - as though journalists hate it when pollies do that. Part of it is old-school homophobia; they were young blades then, and McMahon was a queer old irrelevance delaying the coming of Gough. For all their experience of politics they can't quite explain why, in modern parlance, McMahon 'saved the furniture': he went into the 1972 election with a surplus of seven seats and out with a deficit of only nine, which is why the Coalition were back in office under three years rather than waiting out the decade.
Because they don't do policy, they really can't explain why McMahon was so terrible. He didn't divide the country while at war, like Hughes, and nor did he faff around in the face of economic emergency and geopolitical threat like Lyons.
Even more embarrassingly, they can't explain why they thought so highly of Tony Abbott, and why all the evidence shows they were so so wrong to do so. This isn't some sudden development; Abbott was never good enough to become Prime Minister. The more experience you have covering politics, the greater your professional negligence in failing to notice that.
The comparison is stronger than you realise. The alternatives available, much less so.
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