Over the past couple years, I have observed with some sympathy the frustrations of Labor members over the apparent media obsession with leadership contests. Their argument that political discourse should be about policies rather than personalities is valid. The reality, however, is far more complex. We have always voted, with varied intensity, for personalities. We are susceptible to charisma — a quirk that has been exploited since the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon. We saw it at work here in Bob Hawke.
It was at play when Kevin Rudd won in 2007 and Barack Obama in 2008. If it were only a matter of ditching the incumbent and voting for change, any of their predecessors could have delivered. After all, party platforms rarely shift from one leadership change to another. These men won because they seized public sentiment in a way that preceding candidates did not. The success of their campaigns echoes Bill Clinton's image-driven run in 1992, which mined his childhood and featured an election-turning saxophone performance on The Arsenio Hall Show.
The straightforward explanation for this phenomenon is that we are social beings. It is in our nature to be captivated or repulsed by people. The argument recently posed by veteran journalist George Negus — that voters should vote for the ideology of a party rather than its leader — is therefore inadequate.
It ignores the fact that our attachment to ideas and organisations is often inextricable from our attachment to their leading proponents. This is as much the case in politics as it is in other areas like religion, economics and philosophy. Our belief systems or loyalties live and die according to the perceived credibility of leaders. It explains in part why questions regarding trust and authenticity are potent in elections, or rather, toxic for the hapless candidate, as former Prime Minister Julia Gillard found.
Mere ideology doesn't bind if the sense of betrayal and disillusionment runs deep enough. This is not necessarily a matter of sentimentality. In the postmodern setting, where politicians themselves seem to pick and choose which aspects of their party philosophy to stand by, it shouldn't be a surprise that voters have lost their compass. The problem is not that they have abandoned their ideological sensibilities, as Negus implies. Our political parties have.
Consider, for instance, how an ostensibly economically Liberal Party under Tony Abbott has been vociferous in its opposition to a market-based policy on climate change. Or an ostensibly socially democratic Labor Government downgraded single-parent payments to leverage workforce participation, when single parents have been identified as at risk of falling into poverty. We see the same dissonance across the Pacific, where a Democratic government led by a Nobel Peace Prize winner has been far more hawkish on war and security than its Republican predecessors.
In other words, voters find it difficult to buy ideas wholesale when they don't make sense in retail. This is gritty stuff: imagine a voter who would like to see the Labor Party build on reforms in education and health but cannot abide its policy on asylum seekers. 'Ideology' has limited value under such conditions.
This is where the focus on personalities actually matters. Much of the dissatisfaction with leaders ultimately rests on a public assessment of the way policies are prosecuted. The fact is that whoever is on top does determine the policy direction for the party and the cohesiveness of its agenda. There is no clearer demonstration of this than the fact that the Liberal Party backtracked on an emissions trading scheme that had been negotiated in good faith by Malcolm Turnbull, by replacing him with Tony 'Climate Change is Crap' Abbott.
In the case of Labor, the justification in 2010 that 'the Government has lost its way' under Rudd turned out not to refer to policy but his character. Partisans can thus hardly complain that the media obsesses over personalities.
As for the electorate, the focus on personalities does not always constitute undemocratic laziness or a reality-show mentality, but a demand for leadership on specific issues. If anything has been reinforced lately it is that there is alchemy to political leadership. It turns out that one can govern reasonably well, build consensus, and institute important reform but still not convince. Maybe we're poorer for that. Or perhaps as an electorate, we have become more astute about the nuances of our choice.
Fatima Measham is a Melbourne-based social commentator who contributes regularly to Eureka Street. Her work has also appeared in The Drum, ABC Religion & Ethics, and National Times. She is a recipient of the Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship in 2013. She tweets as @foomeister.
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