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The sum of all fears: John Hinkson writes that John Howard's success has been an intuitive and opportunistic grasping within a new kind of society, one that undermines the basic associations central to social life.

Article Excerpt
Many of the commentaries on John Howard's ten years in power speak of how he has gained commanding authority through the last two election campaigns. These commentaries deal with empirical facts but they do not give a convincing account of the basis of this authority. Some refer to the collapse of allegiance to Labor as the reason for Howard's authority, but again what is the basis of this collapse? The first five years of Howard was full of uncertainty and doubt leading to desperate attempts to galvanise his campaigns. The second campaign centred on the GST. It was a galvanising issue, even though many Liberals had doubts about whether it would be a winning issue. As few people would then have described Howard's hold over the Australian public as authoritative, what made the difference in the last two campaigns?

Everyone knows the obvious political facts. In the campaign of 2001, despite Kim Beazley seeming to have an unbeatable lead early in the year because of the practical impact of the GST, there was the Tampa affair and the scare about border crossers in the broad setting of the shock of September 11. In the campaign of 2004, there was the question of whether to trust Mark Latham with our security and fears about the fragility of the economy, the trap of debt generated by the property boom and whether Labor could restrain interest rates as had the Liberals. In both these campaigns, Howard was able to craft a position that engaged growing fears in the broad electorate. He found a way to mine a new level of doubt and uncertainty. In the process he developed a politics almost exclusively for the worse. Most people on the Left regard this politics, oriented as it is towards fear rather than perspective and policy, to be a dangerous one. But the crucial question for politics (as well as understanding the ten years of Howard) is not Howard the man but the reason for the emergence of this fear. While interest rate fears are pretty conventional matters, this fear runs much deeper.

Howard, to his own surprise, has step-by-step uncovered the possibility of a new politics. He did not understand the basis of that politics. His method was intuitive, pragmatic and opportunistic rather than based in understanding.

The fear engaged by Howard is not trivial or short term. It is based in the growing turmoil experienced by ordinary people in both their economy and also well beyond the economy--in everyday lives as society enters a basic transformation. Certainly the fear of border crossers is real, as is the fear of terror. One could add here the fear of not just losing a job but of jobs being lost on a grand scale. While these fears are sometimes manufactured--as, for example, in the children overboard affair--by and large they emerge from more basic processes. Nor are they going to go away or settle down, allowing a return to the normal electoral cycle. The turmoil that gives rise...

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