mile carltonFrom SMH 1/12/07 JOHN HOWARD'S political corpse is not yet cold but, as expected, the forlorn remnants of his once triumphant band of media toadies have bent to the task of building and burnishing the legend. The greatest prime minister we have known, they tell us. A rich legacy … changed the country … an end to political correctness forever … unmatched prosperity … history will smile fondly, blah blah. One small part of that is true. Howard did change the country. For the worse. Devious and deceitful, he sought not the better angels of our nature, to borrow Abraham Lincoln's immortal phrase. He evoked, instead, the darker side of our national character. Greed. Envy. Xenophobia. A cynically confected nationalism. The urge to banish minorities to the margins of society, be they gays or trade unionists or Aborigines or academics or Muslims or anyone else deemed beyond the pale of the white picket fence. All these were emblematic of the Howard years; these and a stunted failure of the imagination which squandered the national wealth we achieved. Peter Coleman, a former NSW state Liberal leader who also lost his seat at an election, called Howard a megalomaniac the other day. Being Peter Costello's father-in-law, Coleman is understandably bitter, but the charge sticks. It took time, but inevitably Howard was the instrument of his own destruction, leaving behind him the ruins of the party he professed to serve.
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