Nobody has died yet, but yesterday's editorials were howling for blood. Just about every reporter and would-be opinionator wants Kevin Rudd to mount an open challenge to Julia Gillard's leadership. Her newly furrowed brow — I had never seen a wrinkle before she was dragged out of The Lobby by The Bodyguard — is proof that being hated makes you look old.brac
Rudd on the other hand has gone smug. He says that questions about Gillard handing out polling in 2010 which showed that his leadership was foundering were 'for others' to comment on.
Papers like the Herald Sun have gone for the iceberg theory. Her captaincy of the HMAS Concordia is over, it editorialised on Thursday, doomed not only because of her policy reversals (the carbon pricing scheme, pre-commitment on pokies and the watered-down mining tax) which brought it too close to the Rocks, but for her oratorial failure to convince the likes of Laurie Oakes and my next-door neighbour that she is sincere.
For me, her spack-attack on the Chief Justice of the High Court after that court scuttled her atrocious attempt to send asylum seekers to Malaysia without the protection of the UN Charter of Human Rights was bitterly disappointing from the very first woman to hold the office of Australian prime minister. And I have said so. But I have had to reconsider my feelings about her leadership too.
The level of personal criticism and downright hatred carries with it the burden of misogyny. And being hated is unbearable. Just ask Kristy Fraser-Kirk who was badly damaged by her entirely justifiable attack on the Board of David Jones when she was sexually harassed by the CEO. Just ask me. You think you can tough it out. You can, but there is one hell of a price.
Gillard is brave, even if she is not particularly brilliant. Who, among our politicians, would like to stay on the bridge as the liner starts to tip?
Alistair Mant wrote in one of his books on leadership that the major problem with leaders, particularly in politics, is that level three people aim for and often get level five jobs. They have to work so hard and in such detail that they feel they are