They're having an election in Australia on October 9. The Sydney Morning Herald is probably the best place for coverage. The best blog coverage is probably at the Road to Surfdom.
It bodes ill for my own personal productivity, what with the U.S. election also on. Aside from the kick-in-the-pants that is having to take PhD prelims, one reason I got stuff done in 2003 was that there were no elections in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States. [no-one should remind me that I wasn't marathon training last year either ....]
In any case, why should American readers care about the Australian election? One word. Iraq. Australia is the first of the three countries that made major troop contributions at the start of the war to hold an election in the wake of the failure to find the weapons that were the war's apparent rationale.
Those issues of trust and national security which will be important in Australia, are also critical to the U.S. election. Obviously the political culture and institutions are quite different in many respects. Notions that a Howard victory/defeat points to a Bush victory/defeat would be reading too much into tea leaves diluted by the Pacific ocean.
Like in Britain, like in the United States, the government that went into Iraq is facing an opposition that has not been able to capitalize nearly as much as it should have been able to on the deceptions made by the government.
I'm no fan of John Howard, but he has the singular advantage that George Bush doesn't, of being able to run on a pretty good economic record.
The related reason that Americans should pay attention to Australia's election is to see if the Bush administration continues its 0 for many record in trying to influence elections and referenda in foreign countries. After its success in helping win the German election for the Social Democrats, getting the Korean president that it didn't want, and seeing Hugo Chavez win a referenda; the Bush administration surely won't want to try and "help" John Howard out with praise or an endorsement during the campaign, right?
Apropos of my post on Thursday that touched on American ability to change foreign people's minds; if the Bush administration can't give the subtle assist to friendly foreign governments that they want to give, we should be sceptical that the Bush administration could make the right moves in a country more hostile to American involvement.
Posted by robe0419 at August 29, 2004 3:09 PM