Political Governance

The thing that makes quality political governance so difficult to achieve in our nation is that we have an entrenched "two party" system. It's a binary system that ensures no one party will get out of sync with the other.

If one does get too far out of sync then the instincts of the *losing* political actors are engaged to drag the parties back together again. This is especially the case when one party is much more popular or of significantly higher quality than the other. That is when enormous effort is expended to "re-sync". Witness Abbott's attempts to drag Rudd down to his level - and the consequences.

Now this can only work if a sufficiently large subset of the voting population are seduced and influenced by political sophistry. Unfortunately many of us are not clever enough to know that we have been manipulated by the political machines and their supporting cast in big business and the media. And of course there are a range of other factors - including the intellect of the respective actors.

And the really scary thing is that in this case it worked - spectacularly well. Expect to see more of this across all levels of Government. Politics will now be more or less permanently *dumbed down* - because that approach works. Political reform now looks to be as dead as the dodo.

I reminds me of why the Howard Government lasted so long - because the then opposition under Beasley took a "small target" approach. That strategy is now completely dead and buried. Howard probably would have been a one term wonder if Labor had done to him what Abbott has just done to Rudd.