I never know until the election whether I am in Melbourne Ports or Goldstein since I live on the cusp and, like the German border with Poland, it keeps moving back and forth. But what I do know is that one of the advantages Labor has over the Coalition is that the selection stream for getting to the top largely travels through the union movement. And among the many things that are learned by being a union official is how to address a crowd. There is always in every workplace someone who is a natural born agitator, but only some of these have political sense and even after that, only some of these have an ability to speak persuasively in public. It is these who rise to the top of the ALP. The policy packages they offer may be maximally damaging to the country, but they certainly can sell. Think Bob Hawke as the archetype.

On the Coalition side, there are few places for a candidate to hone their thoughts or learn the ability to speak in the face of opposition before they make it into Parliament. There are fewer opportunities to be tested in a real showdown, with ideological knives out and values on the line. It has always been a disadvantage to the right side of politics, and not just in Australia, that it does not develop the kinds of speakers that are so common on the left. Which is all preamble to the post by Andrew Bolt the other day on The Liberals need warriors, not worriers, where he begins his post with words I understand only too well:

The Liberals lack MPs who not only understand Liberal values but have the guts and skill to argue for them publicly. It needs MPs who can hold their own against the ABC and the largely Leftist media, and rally the public to their cause. How many MPs do you know like that?

The final three seeking the Liberal nomination in Goldstein are down to three.

The weekend preselection for Andrew Robb’s electorate of Goldstein is set to go down to the wire, with international relations expert and local favourite Denis Dragovic running neck-and-neck with high-profile former human rights commissioner Tim Wilson. Liberal insiders tip the preferences of a third candidate, party blue-blood and lawyer Georgina Downer, as crucial in the race.

You should read the post to see who stands for what and who might be ready for the ideological confrontations that will take place over issues that are not even on the horizon. Here I will only emphasise that among the high-level pre-requisites ought to be an ability to take up these various issues in a way that will get the message across. Tim Wilson and Georgina Downer are proven in this very tough field. To quote Andrew again:

The Liberals need public champions. It’s no good being a lion in the preselection room but a mouse in the ABC studio. And that is why I’m so puzzled. I mean no disrespect to Dragovic, but in all my years of public debate I have never come across his name before. He is unknown to me as a champion of Liberal values. And when I now go through his few articles in the media – almost exclusively on Islam, terrorism and the Middle East – I can understand why he has made so little impression.

Making an impression in the wider world by being a tough in-fighter in the hand-to-hand battles of Parliament and the media are what is needed. Without that, you are a mere foot soldier Parliamentary spectator, where others must take up the battles on your behalf. We will see by Monday who my neighbours here in the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Goldstein have chosen.

The first of the Trump anti-Hillary ads and it’s on foreign policy where a very large part of the battle for the presidency will be fought. After the last seven years and by then it will be eight, it will undoubtedly be time for a change, and Obama’s former Secretary of State, the woman who oversaw the disaster in Libya and much else, will definitely not bring that change.

It’s hard to imagine how bad Obama’s foreign policy has been. Here in this article by Niall Ferguson we get some of it but hardly even here the full horror of its incompetence and arrogant stupidity. It’s from The Atlantic and titled, Barack Obama’s Revolution in Foreign Policy. The first para sets the scene:

It is a criticism I have heard from more than one person who has worked with President Obama: that he regards himself as the smartest person in the room—any room. Jeffrey Goldberg’s fascinating article reveals that this is a considerable understatement. The president seems to think he is the smartest person in the world, perhaps ever.

And after traipsing through Obama’s deep thoughts on foreign policy, this is where we end.

If you think you are smarter than every foreign-policy expert in the room, any room, then it is tempting to make up your own grand strategy. That is what Obama has done, to an extent that even his critics underestimate. There is no “Obama doctrine”; rather, we see here a full-blown revolution in American foreign policy. And this revolution can be summed up as follows: The foes shall become friends, and the friends foes. . . .

If the arc of history is in fact bending toward Islamic extremism, sectarian conflict, networks of terrorism, and regional nuclear-arms races, then the 44th president will turn out to have been rather less smart than the foreign-policy establishment he so loftily disdains.

A lot of people will die as these forces work themselves out. Some new balance will eventually be established, but the likelihood that it will be anything like what the rest of us would like is very unlikely indeed.

Is this a former Prime Minister raking over old coals to tell us not be be raking over old coals. Why yes it is.

John Howard says he told former prime minister Tony Abbott to remove his chief of staff Peta Credlin, as he warned Coalition MPs to “stop raking over old coals” and focus on the re-election of a Turnbull government.

Just days after political commentator Niki Savva’s new book The Road to Ruin revealed NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells personally warned Mr Abbott of the perception he was having an affair with Ms Credlin and needed to move her on, Mr Howard confirmed he had urged the former prime minister to dump his chief of staff.

Whatever Peta Credlin did or did not do, that is not why Malcolm continually did all he could to “pull the rug from underneath Tony Abbott”. Malcolm is now the author of his own mess because it turns out he is nowhere near as good as he thinks he is. He had better not lose this election, that’s all there is to say. And if anyone has been stoking the flames of division of late, it’s been that confessed teller of untruths and Malcolm Turnbull shill, Nikka Savva and no one else.

This is a quote from Alan Jones via Andrew Bolt. The “he” here is Malcolm Turnbull:

I might add he asked me to talk to Tony about it and I did. Malcolm was always ringing around on anything that might pull the rug from underneath Tony Abbott. The point is Malcolm Turnbull’s now Prime Minister and he’s doing exactly what he criticised Tony Abbott for doing…. Malcolm Turnbull seems in government to have been struck with rigamortis. But as I said, when Tony Abbott announced a plebiscite, Malcolm Turnbull’s opposed to [this] and rang me to express that opposition.

It is just said so nonchalantly, hardly worth mentioning, really. What else would anyone do, except that no one else did. That Malcolm asks anyone for loyalty demonstrates how lacking in insight he really is.