Howard's End
America lost a great ally in the electoral defeat of Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Saturday. Sure, it signals the shifting currents of democracy. But it won't stop us from missing him.
If "standup guy" could apply to anyone, it's Howard. He understood the nature of the jihadi war on the West and the significance of spreading democracy to benighted parts of the world that incubate terror.
But he didn't just think it, he meant it — by contributing thousands of troops to the cause of victory in both Iraq and Afghanistan. America had no greater ally than the man who led Australia to greatness for 11 years.
Howard also gave Australia much in its spectacular economy, its full employment, its 11 straight years of growth and its rising standing in the world.
But he gave much to the rest of the world as well — by bringing order to the chaos of East Timor from 1999 to 2007, by bailing out Asian neighbors in the 1997-98 financial crisis and by rescuing Indian ocean states from the destruction of the 2004 tsunami.
Howard's successor, the agreeable left-leaning Kevin Rudd, 50, will not easily match the achievements of his doughty, determined predecessor. But like Thatcher and Churchill, Howard was ousted by voters at the zenith of his achievement.
The mysterious dynamics of democracy moved against him. Australia's voters, with the youngest having no memory of anything other than a government that worked, jobs that were plentiful and a future that was crisis-free, moved toward something new, as if these conditions could be taken for granted.
Still, like markets, maybe they showed a collective voter sense of their own interests beyond the current issues. Perhaps they anticipated that in Howard's success in the war on terror, time was coming to focus on new issues closer to home.
Whatever it was, it wasn't a poor performance as leader that moved Australia's voters to swing the political pendulum the other way. Sad as it is to see Howard's end, real democracies always change, just as seismically engineered skyscrapers must shift from side to side in the Earth's motion to always stand tall.
Howard lost resoundingly, to be sure. Labor opponents picked up 26 seats to win a majority of 80 in the 150-member House of Representatives. But what Howard built in his achievements will leave a mark on Australia for a time when voters favor change once again.
Political currents are one thing. But John Howard was more than a current. He was a unique leader whose achievements rose above political tides.