I asked a few days ago of a piece by Glenn Milne, highly critical of Howard
does it reflect a nascent Press Gallery consensus that Howard is consistently dishonest, and therefore should not be PM?
Judging by Greg Hywood in today’s SMH and Michelle Grattan in yesterday’s Age, the answer is a definite Yes. Grattan and, to a lesser extent, Hywood are opinion leaders for the Press Gallery; they set the assumptions by which others assess the action (more on this Real Soon Now).
So the cumulative impact of ethanol, Tuckey and Hanson has been substantial, even though the government has ridden them all out. Perceptions won’t have been helped by the recent arrival of the Tampa refugees (the government’s official assessment, not mine) who Howard promised would never be allowed to set foot on Australian soil. Even for those who supported the government’s policy, it must now be clear that this episode showed the Howard government at its sordid worst.
John Quiggin 
I suspect that most swing voters expect politicians to lie. They don’t approve of it but think it’s just part of how the world is.
And if this is right then there’s not much to be gained by trying to cultivate a reputation for honesty (the voters would snicker cynically at the very idea of an honest politician) and little to be lost by being caught out.
Far better to preside over a strong economy and do things that voters approve of. Unless the voters strongly disaprove of things you’re trying to cover up then lying about them probably won’t hurt too much (as long as it doesn’t lead to some kind of expensive and damaging legal action).
Did anyone – other than the die-hard Clinton haters – really care that Bill stained Monica’s dress?
The lies told by Bill Clinton were the type that people expect and had little impact on other people’s lives ie were of no real consequence.
The lies told by Tony Blair, George W Bush and John Howard in relation to a range of policy decisions are a very different matter. There are still a number of people who expect politicians to lie but prefer to have the truth told to them.
However I don’t know if the tide of pro Howard journalists is changing. Greg Sheridan wrote a piece yesterday which presented Tony Abbott’s tawdry role in the imprisonment of Pauline Hanson as something akin to that of a white knight.
With that kind of critical appraisal it is no wonder that people are left feeling remote from the political process and judging politics on how things are going personally for themselves.
To be fair to Greg Sheridan, there is a strong argument that Abbott was justified. John seems to endorse it, and so would I if he had been more up front about it.
I don’t know what Sheridan wrote in the Australian, but it was probably the same argument he made on Richard Glover’s radio program last week. That argument was demolished on the spot by Ross Gittins: had Abbott been open and public in encouraging and bankrolling Sharples it would have been an acceptable tactic; but he didn’t want to alienate Hanson’s supporters by seeming complicit in her crucifixion, so he kept his operation secret and indeed lied about it. Sheridan will often try out an audacious argument to defend the indefensible, and it sometimes works but not this time.