Referendum

The Australian election passed with relatively little note in the US media. John O'Sullivan notes that it deserves coverage:

John Howard beat Mark Latham in what is, by Ozzie standards, a landslide. O'Sullivan notes:

If Labor had won, the world would have seen the result as a dramatic erosion of international support for George Bush's Iraq intervention — much more important than the Spanish elections (which threw out a Bush ally in favor of a left-wing government that immediately withdrew Spanish troops).

Australia has been a faithful U.S. ally in every American war since 1917 without needing (in John Kerry's words) to be either "coerced or bribed." At risk was a splintering of the English-speaking alliance (America, Australia and Great Britain) that has been the moral and military core of the war on terrorism.

A Howard defeat would have been a setback for the Anglosphere, a disaster for the United States and a catastrophe for George W. Bush (and Tony Blair). And it would have been celebrated as such — make no mistake — by France, Germany, Middle Eastern despots, the United Nations, and the massed NGOs (non-governmental organizations) of the "international community."

But Howard won. Indeed, he won a landslide of sweeping proportions — something rare by the standards of the cautious Aussie electorate.

I remember when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in the UK; it was well before Reagan's election, and it served as a bellwether of the conservative tide.

While the Australian election was about much more than just the war on terror, Howard's election was, at the very least, a major reinforcement of moderate-conservative values and Bush's war policy. We've "held our base", and a key member of the Coalition and a lynchpin of the Anglosphere has fairly resoundingly signed on for another hitch.

So that makes three bits of quietly good news in a week - the debate, the shoring-up of the polls, and how Howard.

Hm - why haven't any of them gotten any coverage?

Posted by Mitch at October 11, 2004 08:34 AM | TrackBack