Will the real Prime Minister please stand up? tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Will the real Prime Minister please stand up?

Posted by Claire Connelly in Humour, Media, Politics

While Laurie Oakes marvels that the new Julia sounded an awful lot like the old Julia,  Claire Connelly wants to know what on earth they did with Kevin 1.0?

It occurs to me that sometimes being too good can backfire.

Pipe down, before you think I’m growing a big head, I am referring to a one Kevin Rudd and the comments he made today in support of the Labor party (note: not Julia Gillard).

Mr Rudd was ruthless when he addressed the media in Brisbane this afternoon, where he said he honestly believed that Tony Abbott “is not up to the job of being prime minister of Australia”.

He did it all, and it was almost magical.

He gracefully acknowledged his family had been through a tough time, he bowed his head, smiled for the cameras and said he no longer wanted to be “a big ball of anger” and that he was back-on-board to support his party (so long as it didn’t impede his surgical recovery where he had his raging bile duct gallbladder removed) because he “did not want Labor’s legacy to be destroyed by Mr Abbott”.

For the first time since he even took office Kevin Rudd looked Prime Ministerial.

“Why – oh why did it take him this damn long to get into character?”, I thought.

And then – this happened:

“There is a real danger at present because of the rolling political controversy about myself that Mr Abbott is simply able to slide quietly into the office of the prime ministership,” said Rudd.

He had to do it didn’t he? He had to take it a step too far.

This one quote, was re-quoted and replayed for an entire news cycle by countless newspapers, online websites, radio disc jockeys and television presenters, in a story about Kevin Rudd making a last minute comeback, swooping down from his mighty soap box to save the very person responsible for his own demise from defeat because she just couldn’t bloody make it on her own, (fade in Raiders of the Lost Ark theme song).

This (not so well-meaning gesture) ended up doing more harm than good because Kev was too good, too smart, too eloquent -  too sassy.

For a minute everyone stopped wondering what happened to the “new Julia”, and found themselves asking “what the hell happened to Kev 1.0?”

Did the surgeon forget to put his ego back after sucking all the bile out of his system?

When they got in there did they discover that his body had integrated the Little Book of Calm?

Was he still high from the morphine?

The internet was buzzing – and why not?

People were bound to be confused – with Kevin on his game, and Julia so far off her game that she was playing snakes and ladders while the rest of us played chess, it was only a matter of time before people began to question who ought to be leading this party, (again).

It was the come back we’ve been waiting for – and I wanted to believe him.

I wanted to imagine Abbott squirming in his smitedness, and I wanted to praise Rudd’s performance, a little bit arrogant, a little bit mean,  with a subtle knowing under current designed as a silent gesture to his one-time deputy as if to say “this is how the big boys do it” – proudly taking credit for saving the Labor party from an almost inevitable death-by-numbers.

But the only thing that statement made me think of was Julia Gillard’s political thuggery.

It was his choice of words.

The phrase “slide quietly into office” – any other phrase would have done the trick but his language was so deliberate and so easy to interpret.

Rumours abounded the twittersphere about back-room deals and his appointment to the UN being conditional on him campaigning for the taxpayers party that will pay for his lifetime pension.

Online comment trolls scoffed that it was awfully rich of the guy who couldn’t even last a full term telling us that the other guy isn’t worthy of the Prime Ministership – sparking an endless shopping list of every epic Labor fail since the last election.

And without having to do anything at all Tony Abbott got a whole day’s worth of good press by simply doing nothing.

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