Phillip Winston Adams

Yep. It’s happened. Veteran writer, columnist and broadcaster Phillip Adams has found a few good words to say about Prime Minister John Howard.

True, the positive appraisal was made in the context of a comparison with US President George W. Bush. But there it is, in black and white. Harry Heidelberg has helpfully distilled the relevant passages on his blog:

Hence his reforms - whether of the economy or media - will be cautious, careful and comparatively calm. Praise the Lord that he’s not born again but a practising pragmatist.

Once in a while, John Howard has been forced by circumstances to be very bold indeed. In the wake of our biggest terrorist attack - Martin Bryant at Port Arthur in 1996 - Howard changed our gun laws. This in the face of implacable hostility from the Charlton Hestons in the Coalition.

More spectacularly, the PM sent our troops to East Timor in 1999. More courage? Or capitulation to the community view? Either way, there was little support from Washington, and it remains Howard’s finest hour.

Read Bob Woodward’s backstage account of the decision to invade Iraq, informed by long discussions with Bush, and you see Howard as a powerful influence on the President. Go for it! Yet Howard was careful to keep our involvement to a bare minimum. Symbolic, tokenistic. Share the limelight but not the casualties.

Howard ... cautious, careful and comparatively calm. Praise the Lord that he’s not born again but a practising pragmatist.

For some reason, the closing passage of George Orwell’s 1984 suggested itself to me. So I posted a slightly revised rendering of that passage as a comment on Harry’s page. With copious apologies to Orwell and his estate, here ‘tis again:

He gazed up at the enormous face. Many years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark eyebrows. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved John Howard.

For comparison, here's the original of that passage:

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.