Labor’s leadership problems have been a dream for the Liberal Party, not least by obscuring the fact that the real victor in leadership games over recent months has been the prime minister, John Howard. He had bought himself several years of peace from leadership speculation by ruminating about making a decision to retire when he was 64; then, at a time of his own choosing and before that birthday, he announced that after deep reflection, he had decided to hang on indefinitely. Not for his own sake, of course, but for the country and the party. Peter Costello may be generally agreed to be the heir apparent, but Howard, who owes him no favours and is well aware that Costello is itching to dismantle many of his monuments, can wait.
So nicely has Howard played it that the general reaction within the Liberal Party was one of relief. Howard has pretty much cemented an image of substance, solidity and experience and, even if he is far from the visionary, the idealist or the man who can appeal to the emotions, he is part of the furniture. He has had more than his share of luck, but good politicians make their luck. He’s taken some big gambles, and they appear to have succeeded. The way Labor is going at the moment, a Coalition victory might seem certain at the next election, but John Howard and the Liberals never take anything for granted. Howard, on the evidence, is a more certain winner than Costello, particularly as far as the focus groups and the opinion polls are concerned: the electorate has never quite warmed to the Treasurer.
This Cincinnatus has no farm—not in fact, nor in his heart. John Howard has very few personal friends, and almost no interests outside politics. He reads a little more, and a little more widely, than most politicians, but gets little satisfaction or intellectual pleasure from it—his skills and his instincts are visceral, not drawn from books. He could play some international diplomatic role, but is so used to playing the leader that he would find it difficult to take a brief. He is probably too old and too proud to prostitute himself, as Hawke has, to commerce.
In politics, he and his ideas will be dead the moment he leaves the stage, and there will be no queue of people calling to have him ruminate at gatherings. He