The demonising of John Howard

May 17, 2008, 9:57am,  199 views

I like this cartoon by Jon Kudelka, who gave me permission to use it here.

You could read it a couple of ways, which is an attribute of a good cartoon.

To me, it speaks of how John Howard was demonised: not by cartoonists, but by the media and sections of the community.

He was portrayed in some quarters as an untrustworthy, ugly, mean-spirited, rodent-tailed runt.

Setting aside the fact he stayed too long and lost a winnable election, it’s somewhat sad there is little respect for his term in office.

I’m the first to admit the Coalition deserved to lose the last election because they failed to outline a fresh vision, but Howard and his Government don’t deserve to be demonised.

They presided over good economic times in a responsible manner until the final spending splurge.

The demonising of Howard started much earlier than 2007 and can be traced largely to the universities and inner cities. There was a good discussion about it on Radio National in July 2004.

It really annoyed the chardonnay left that Howard had strong appeal among blue-collar voters. That appeal faded towards the end and contributed to his electoral defeat.

Howard wasn’t a great Prime Minister, but he wasn’t a bad one either.

I’ll be interested to see what caricature of Kevin Rudd emerges among cartoonists over the next couple of years.