THE CALLING OF POLITICS

Last week, an Australian was awarded the Victoria Cross for the first time in 40 years. Trooper Mark Donaldson deliberately made himself a target to protect wounded comrades. He then ran 80 metres under machine gun fire to carry to safety a wounded Afghan interpreter. It was, as Prime Minister Rudd said, an ideal of the courage and selflessness to which men can rise; an act that should inspire generations of Australians.

Showing the modesty to be expected of an Australian warrior, Trooper Donaldson denied that he was a hero and said that he was just doing his job.

Another Australian received a medal last week. In Washington, President Bush conferred on John Howard the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It was the first time an Australian Prime Minister had been honoured in this way. In conferring the award, the President said that Mr Howard had helped to produce a safer world and a stronger country. He epitomized, said the President, “all that Americans like and admire most” about Australians.

Showing the self-effacement that was a characteristic of his prime ministership, Mr Howard said that the award was a compliment to Australia rather than to himself.

That is where the similarities end in this tale of two medals. Trooper Donaldson’s award, as was right, generated nothing but acclaim. Whatever people thought of the war in Afghanistan, here was proof that the Anzac spirit still lived. Whatever the folly of generals and politicians, there was always the shining virtue of the private soldier.

Reactions to Mr Howard’s award, by contrast, ranged from muted compliments to bilious rage. Eighty two per cent of over 11,000 respondents to The Age’s on-line poll said he didn’t deserve it. My ABC blog, giving credit to Bush and Howard, generated 367 mostly apoplectic responses within two days. “Bush couldn’t have bought a better lapdog at Pets R Us” was their tenor.

“Only a fool accepts a medal from an idiot” said another respondent. This is the kind of cheap shot that everyone in politics has to get used to. Whatever George Bush’s faults or mistakes, idiots don’t become president of the United States. What’s more, no Australian leader should spurn recognition from an American president, however unpopular he might be.

It’s worth pondering, though, in the different reactions to these medals, the different responses people have to courage in battle and to courage in public life. My point is not to single out the virulence of Howard-hating because Paul Keating may have aroused as much antagonism. Rather, it’s to highlight the hostility that politicians who stand for something nearly always provoke.

When Garibaldi rallied his men for the march on Rome, he said: “I offer you neither pay, nor quarters, nor food. I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely with his lips, follow me”. At least in Western counties, there is no risk of death in the battle of ideas. In other respects, though, Garibaldi’s grim invitation might be extended to anyone who wants to be involved in leading a country. Public life is not without its satisfactions but they’re rarely sustaining. The chief reward is the knowledge that you’ve tried to serve your country and the hope, often forlorn, that this might be recognised by people who matter.

If there was anyone in politics who deserved a medal for political courage, it was John Howard. Whether it was banning semi-automatic rifles, introducing the GST, getting wharfies to earn their money, allowing workers and bosses directly to negotiate with each other, dealing with boat people before they reached Australia, or making people work for the dole, Howard did what was previously thought impossible. He was the great boundary buster of Australian politics but almost never boasted about it. With Howard, even the most radical change was about restoring the kind of common sense that should always have prevailed.

Field Marshall Slim, a fighting soldier who became Governor-General of Australia, once said that moral courage was a higher and rarer virtue than physical courage. Moral courage means facing issues and making decisions that every normal human instinct would rather avoid. Provided you have to answer for the decision, it takes a similar measure of courage to commit soldiers to battle as to face the bullets yourself. John Howard wrestled with these decisions no less than John Curtin. It was in recognition of this, I imagine, that the Chief of the Australian Army last year conferred on John Howard a personal commendation.

As George Will once said, the cry goes up for leadership from millions of people who wouldn’t recognize it if they saw it and would reject it if they did. In a famous essay on the vocation of politics, the sociologist Max Weber described politicians as a “pariah caste”. “It is not a road for everyone”, he said, “least of all for weak characters”. Politicians deal with the problems that are too big or too hard for individuals or private organisations to handle on their own. The difference between a politician and almost every other citizen is his preparedness to take responsibility, not just for his own actions, but for the state of the wider world.

When you think of it, it’s an extraordinary presumption. Someone has to analyse problems, devise improvements, implement them and, most importantly, take responsibility for them but this doesn’t mean that people will be grateful, especially when change is not to their taste. How dare he change the circumstances of my employment, revise the way I get to work, alter the rules under which I live, or put at risk the reputation of my country. This tends to be the public’s response to politicians’ decisions regardless of the arguments in their favour.

There are only two kinds of popular politicians: those who haven’t yet made a tough decision and those who have been vindicated by events. Kevin Rudd and, for all his undoubted brilliance and promise, Barack Obama are in the former category. Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan are in the latter. I am sure that John Howard too will be one day. Some politicians retire with honour only to have their reputations hijacked by subsequent events or a popular change of heart. Stanley Baldwin, Britain’s preeminent inter-war politician, was eventually trashed by history for underestimating the threat of Nazism even though almost everyone else did at the time. At a different level, Bob Carr totally dominated NSW politics but only until he was no longer there to spin away elegant inertia.

Every politician has to accept the inevitability of failure. Bob Hawke was rolled by his party. John Howard lost his seat. Even Sir Robert Menzies, it seems, was so disillusioned by his successors that he failed to vote for the party he founded. These, of course, were the most successful post-war Australian politicians. There are also all the unknown soldiers of politics who fail at pre-selection; the backbench MPs, unspectacular ministers, and frontbenchers whose party never made it into government who are mere footnotes to history. Then there are the people whose achievements are never quite recognized because they never quite made it to the top. Kim Beazley, for instance, is almost certainly a more substantial person than Kevin Rudd but the times never suited him. At every level, many are called but few are chosen. All of them, at least to some extent, have risked their reputations, livelihoods and personal happiness to try to improve their country.

It’s important that people interested in politics are under no illusions about political life. The hours are long, the responsibilities immense, the exposure relentless, the pay modest, the satisfactions fleeting, and the pressure on families cruel. Federal politicians spend 20 weeks a year in Canberra. To the public, travel is a perk of the job. To MPs’ spouses, it can be grounds for divorce. Politicians have official and semi-official socializing most days. To the public, it’s little more than having fun on taxpayer’s time. To MPs’ families, it’s being married to the job, not them. Prime Minister Rudd is about to freeze MPs’ salaries for the second year running. For him, it’s just another headline-opportunity but for most voters it’s a reminder that politicians still earn more than they do.

To the public, when it’s not snouts in the trough, politics means stabbing people in the back, working the “numbers” and trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. As Weber said, “it is not astonishing that there are many (politicians) who have become human failures and worthless men. Rather it is astonishing that, despite everything, this very stratum includes such a great number of valuable and quite genuine men, a fact that outsiders would not easily guess”.

Why would anyone be a politician? It’s a fair question. Because there are considerably easier ways to earn a living or to make a name for yourself, the only sustaining reason to be in politics is the determination to make a difference. That’s what makes politics a calling rather than just a job.

At a low ebb in his prime ministership, John Howard declared that politics was a “hard and unforgiving business” but also one of “the highest and noblest forms of public service”. To the extent that Australia’s laws are fair and public institutions sound, politicians can claim credit. If our country is worth working for, it’s worth being in politics.

All the big challenges that Australia faces demand the intervention of politicians. If you think that schools are failing young Australians, you can become a teacher and try to inspire a love of learning in your students; a principal who runs the best possible school within the confines of the system; or a politician who can actually change the system that’s holding them back. If you think that public hospitals are a mess, you can become a doctor or nurse and do your best despite the system; an administrator and try to make a bad system work better; or a politician and put in place a system that actually responds to the needs of patients and the people who treat them. If you think that Australia has a dysfunctional federation, you can lobby your local MP, write letters to newspapers, and perhaps even prepare learned papers on possible constitutional change but to restructure the system it takes a politician.

Although Australians generally respect teachers, academics, health professionals and even community activists more than politicians, the politicians they respect most are the ones who seem most committed to their cause. People who think that unions are just another sectional interest, who heed climate change science rather than green religion, who instinctively prefer more freedom to bigger government and a tax cut to a spending programme, who regard individuals doing their own thing as generally preferable to government trying to organize everyone, who instinctively give the benefit of the doubt to institutions that have stood the test of time, and who don’t think that this generation is uniquely brilliant are more important than ever in politics since the defeat of the Howard Government. Of course, success is not guaranteed even for the best of causes. Their failure is certain, though, unless men and women are prepared to argue for them, take risks for them and if necessary suffer for them.

Entering parliament, gaining promotion, shining in debate, winning golden opinions are all tremendously exhilarating but effective politics is about advancing the cause not the politician. No politician should plan to lose but every politician must be prepared to fail because a good cause is worth losing for even though that’s rarely how it seems at the time. After a change of government, people aren’t very interested in the opposition but they will notice if our principles seem less important to us than our political prospects.

As Weber concluded, politics is slow boring through hard wood:

“All historical experience confirms the truth --that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well…(armed) with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes…Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics”.

Source: TONY ABBOTT