A fascinating and utterly convincing account of the assessment made of Kevin Rudd’s personality defects and how these were used during the election campaign. From Pam Williams in the AFR:

The Liberal strategy to turn the focus to Rudd’s dysfunction was supported by a secret tactical tool.

Held deep within the top strategy group of the Liberal war room was a document which gave a name and a diagnosis to the personality of Kevin Rudd. It was a document provided to the Liberal’s strategy team on an informal basis by a psychiatrist friendly to the Liberals after Rudd had returned to the Labor leadership on June 26. In a nutshell, this document offered an arm’s-length diagnosis of Rudd as suffering a personality disorder known as “grandiose narcissism”.

The document was not shown to Abbott, but rather remained within the strategy group as an informal check-list, often as a tool for comparison after Rudd had already behaved in ways that the Liberal strategists believed could be leveraged to their advantage. The Liberal war room had reached its own conclusions about Rudd long ago, based on his public behaviour and the damning revelations of his colleagues.

But the document provided an affirmation that the snapshot of the enemy on which a fighting campaign was based had a context. It listed recognisable symptoms and behavioural patterns linking Rudd’s personality to the clinical symptoms for grandiose narcissism – drawing conclusions about Rudd’s mindset. It also proposed tactics to leverage Rudd’s personality.

Describing grandiose narcissism as less a psychiatric disease and more a destructive character defect, the document suggested Rudd was held together by one key strut: an absolute conviction of intellectual superiority over everyone else. “Kick out that strut and he will collapse; basically he is a self-centred two-year-old in an adult body. Prone to wanting everything – now! If not, then he has a two year-old’s tantrum.”

Rudd, the document went on, was vulnerable to any challenge to his self-belief that he was more widely-read, smarter and more knowledgeable than anyone else “on the planet”. Such a condition of grandiose narcissism would make Rudd obsessively paranoid, excessively vindictive – “prepared to wait years to get revenge”, and “a spineless bully” who would strike an easy target; he would predictably be excessively sensitive to personal criticism. If publicly goaded, he could easily have a “mega tantrum”. If described as “stupid”, such a personality would mount an almost impenetrable intellectual defence. If undermined in front of an audience, with his intellect undermined, Rudd could be prone to “narcissistic rage”.

“Later, in attempts to repair the damage, he will claim, in the calmest, coolest and most reasonable way, that his meltdown occurred because those around him are ganging up on him to prevent him from ‘saving Australia’ or some other such grandiose concept.

“Kevin’s explanation for the meltdown will run something like this: ‘Under the difficulties I face trying to save this country from the terrible threats facing it, any reasonable person would have naturally reacted the way I did.’ And then, blah blah, with grandiose ideas of being the country’s saviour.”

Rudd would be threatened by a rival in any of his fields and would be obsessively paranoid and ready to retaliate to real or perceived threats; he would suffer from excessive suspicion. This could be tactically exploited, the document suggested, by promoting the idea that Rudd was merely a caretaker prime minister, to be terminated by colleagues once the election was won.

Inside the Liberal war room the document explained why Rudd “knew best” and “why he had to take over” again as prime minister. And while the document went to explaining behaviour, it also aided the development of pressure points against Rudd – such as pushing the notion that he was full of flimflam, an accusation designed to undermine a superiority complex. The document was a confirmation that many of the tactics and strategic assessments in the war room were on the mark. It crystallised a view of Rudd rather than creating a framework, confirming views of his likely behaviour – a crucial weapon in the psychological warfare of an election campaign.

While Labor fed a storyline (ultimately proved incorrect) that the enemy, Abbott, was so disliked as to be unelectable, the Liberals fed a storyline (ultimately proved correct) that the enemy, Rudd, was so assured of his own superior ability that his campaign would become mired in chaos as he micro-managed and displayed suspicions of those outside his own small cult circle.

The document – simple in its construct and in many ways echoing a view clearly held inside Labor itself where many of Rudd’s colleagues had described him as dysfunctional – raised a riddle no one could answer; if the symptoms were all so obvious and the character flaws so marked, how was it that Labor had chosen Rudd not once, but twice to lead the country?

If Rudd could be interpreted as a grandiose narcissist, then he could not bear to be ignored. He would demand on cue, “Mr Abbott must respond!”

I did the rounds of the usual American news agencies to see what they were saying about our election but aside from saying it was a landslide, there was not much in their writing that I thought captured how we on our side felt had just taken place.

Diplomad 2.0 has the kind of writing on Abbott and the Liberal win that you never see anywhere. It starts from the premise that Labor for the past six years has been a hopeless government. Because unless you start from such a premise, what has just happened before your very eyes makes little sense. Here’s a taste but I, of course, encourage you to read it all:

A big John Howard fan, I admired his blunt speaking, profound patriotism, and willingness to continue the long Aussie tradition of stepping up to defend the West. His rise to power gave me hope that we could avoid four years of Al Gore after eight years of Clinton. Australia, again, proved the land of tomorrow, and we got George W. Bush. I was appalled when Howard’s long run as PM ended and we saw Labor’s Kevin Rudd incumber the office of PM. I saw Rudd more as a European phony than the down-to-earth and very clear-eyed Australians with whom I worked. His kow-towing to the warmist crowd with his signing of Kyoto, and his “apology” for Australia being a great country turned me off completely. I hoped and prayed that Rudd, and his even more bizarre intra-Labor rival, weird Welshwoman Julia Gillard, would not prove a glimpse of what was in store for the USA. This time, Alas! Australia, again, predicted what was to come. We got an inept anti-American Chicago mountebank by the name of Barrack Hussein Obama, who made the shambolic (Note: A great British word!) Rudd-Gilliard-Rudd administration seem like a Swiss railroad in comparison.

And while I’m at it, this was the post from Mark Steyn at National Review he put up on the night.

We get used to not finding our perspectives reflected in the media. And it is not a process of myth making in the normal sense of it’s not being a true reflection of whoever is writing the story. It is an absolutely true reflection. It is just that the people who write the stories do not understand why 53% of the country wanted to see Labor lose. They just don’t get it. They can see that it happened but they can’t explain why, other than as a xenophobic reaction to refugees and the divisions caused by Rudd. That’s why it’s good to read the occasional outside observer who has a take that is similar to our own, just so we can remember the difference when we see it.