It also says something about luck. I think the left leaning govts have been much better percentage players at the federal level since Hawke. Howard, recall lost the 1998 election – but snuck over the line with enough seats. He then was very likely to lose the 2001 election but things went his way (and he played them with great political dexterity and audacity).

So I think John’s point stands up quite well.

As regards elite credibility, I think it does count for a fair bit in the long run, though of course the elite is not, itself, homogeneous.

I am sorry if you don’t think I was sufficiently generous to your writing. I did actually think you knew that he had being elected but on re-reading this certainly doesn’t come across in my ’sure, not for President’. My bad

And yes your comment most certainly did mislead me along the lines you suggest. I probably wouldn’t have even been moved to respond if you had written initially what you wrote subsequently.

However, I am here now, so: You may have a point that a left leaning politician is theoretically more likely to be judged harshly by his electorate for ‘corporate’ crimes, as opposed to a right wing politician who might be theoretically more harshly judged for, say, ‘moral’ weaknesses.

But I strongly suspect that on both sides there is only the theoretical point – left wing politicians seem to have little difficulty getting as rich as their right wing equivalents, and it beggars all belief to imagine that they are somehow more scrupulous in doing so.

I did think as I wrote what I wrote that I should perhaps say that I did know that Ted Kennedy was elected to the Senate umpteen times from the 1970s till now. Then I thought that people would instead of assuming this hadn’t occurred to me, assume that my expression ‘unelectable’ should be read down to the extent of the incongruity. My bad.

I don’t imagine that a right-wing presidential candidate could have got away with Chappaquiddick. I expressed myself much more tentatively than that. Clearly there’s no doubt in your mind, so I’ll bow to your more powerful intuition.

On re-reading what I wrote I actually mislead readers as to what I was thinking which was not so much of a right wing Ted Kennedy getting away with it. What I was thinking was that I doubt a left leaning candidate could have survived with – say – Cheney’s apparent corporate criminality.

I can’t prove that either pretty obviously, but I’ll just set it out here for the record.

Secondly:

Something tells me that it mightnt be so for a pollie on the right

That is the most insane thing I have ever read of yours. I actually struggle to believe you mean it. Personally, I think that if anything it would be harder for a politician on the right because they would alienate much of their Christian and military ‘base’, permanently, but I am only talking State-level elections there. And I am showing my partisan bias, surely.

But partisanship besides, I just can’t imagine that you can imagine a ‘right’-wing Presidential candidate who drunkenly killed his girlfriend, cynically and amorally framed her as the driver and used his influence to get off scot-free.

Competition leads to lower prices my arse. Its the telco communications bizo all over again. Rural
areas shafted, metro areas benefit from the theory.

I don’t know of anything in economic theory that indicates competition leads to lower prices. There is a suggestion that competition pushes the prices towards the cost of supply plus the cost of investment (i.e. profit for the shareholders) but we all know that cost of both supply and investment is higher in rural areas (sheesh, that’s why we have metro areas). Metro areas benefit from not being required to deliver a cross-subsidy to rural areas on utilities.

The rest is political wrangling between interest groups to see who can get themselves into a marginal seat. We could get into complex philosophical discussions of the fairness of forced wealth transfer but at least might as well be honest about what we are really arguing about.

If you do not consider the currently insanely popular Rudd government to be a huge electoral thumbs up for “right leaning parties” then “right-leaning” has no meaning.

In the Australian Financial Review today, Greig Gailey, president of the Business Council of Australia has an op-ed piece supporting the revised Rudd scheme and makes the important point that, If investors judge that the CPRS is going to be materially altred if and when government changes hands, they will probably defer or abandon their investment plans.

So it would be quite unsatisfactory if the bill was rejected by the Opposition and passed with the help of the Greens and the Independents. Coalition support today does not necessarily mean that a change of government would never alter the plan, but Coalition opposition today almost guarantees that it would.

Alan Jury in the Chanticleer column makes another relevant point: As for debate about an ETS versus a carbon tax [which Turnbull is promoting], that battle has already been lost. Europe is now into the second five-year phase of its ETS, Barack Obama has committed the United states to adopting one, and other countries such as Japan are also considering their own.

While UK prime minister Brown has Balls (he’s the Education Secretary) it will be interesting to see whether young Malcolm has the cojones to engage the NSW Liberal Right over the List of Fourteen, which Glenn Milne claims is the deadwood that Malcolm needs to prune.

If they went, plus Nick Minchin (double dissolution perhaps, which would certainly get rid of that twit Fielding), young Malcolm might find it easier to embrace a position on climate change that is closer to the eventual one adopted by John Howard.

But no, that is just too bizarre a scenario.

Sarah Palin was completely incoherent and would pretty obviously say anything, including that her opponent ‘was palling around with terrorists’. Then there was McCain who had a more illustrious past and, having played uneasily from the Republican slime play book, proceeded to back off out of human decency or fear of overreaching himself.

I have no problem with some people ideologically preferring the right. My post wasn’t written from the perspective that Obama is necessarily the greatest. I do have a problem with people preferring people who have been scraped up from so near the bottom of the barrel. The point of my post was that I’m pessimistic that being a complete disgrace, behaving in a way that everyone sees is unacceptable is all that bad for your career though I think for some reason the disciplines work better on the left than the right. Edward Kennedy it turned out really was unelectable after the disgrace that was Chappaquiddick. Something tells me that it mightn’t be so for a pollie on the right – but I accept I can’t prove that.

I havent noticed that it matters that much whether parties are credible to the policy elite.

Surely this is universally acknowledged to be true?

For instance the Libs slipping and sliding on greenhouse looks weak right now.

Hahahaha. Exquisite timing.

As a final note I don’t see why people have such a hard time understanding that other people might not actually think that Obama is really ‘the One’. McCain-Palin’s supporters included (lots of) people who simply preferred their ideological and policy approach to Obama-Biden.

electricity prices havent started rising

Residential tarrifs in Tasmania going up 25% over three years ahead of contestability. On top of that 30-50% increases are expected on the introduction non-competitive market in electricty when ‘contestability’ comes to Tasmaniam residential customers.

Increases? Mostly because the rainfall patterns that all the dams were planned with have failed to materilaise 20, 30 years down the track. Evidence of global warming? We’re more and more reliant on Vic brown coal power stations. Vicious circle.

Compare: There are 20+ electricity retailers in Vic/Melbourne. There are 4 registered retailers for non-residential Tranches in Tasmania, there were 5 but one gave up after 2 years with no customers.

Competition leads to lower prices my arse. Its the telco communications bizo all over again. Rural areas shafted, metro areas benefit from the theory.

Have a pensioner friend in Melbourne who took every electricty bill she got for two years to the ombudsman. Won every time. Tried to swap providers and it took 18 months to swap. Then charged her $80 for the privilage of disconnected their crap supply. Retail margins are so small (they claim) I guess they can only make money off the lazy or the stupid.

If only these price increses did reflect a carbon tax or emissions tradings scheme already!!