Chasing Ordinary

As the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival comes to an end, we're reminded how much Australians love a roughie.  The under-dog, the long-shot chance, that jumps up and rolls the preening favourite.  We're even willing to overlook the fact that the ole nag might be doped to the gills with enough EPO and steroids to win the Tour de France, or is being ridden by a jockey of questionable ethics, or is from the stable of a trainer whose family of bookmakers stand to make more when said trainer's horses lose.  None of this matters too much.  It's the under-dog story we fall in love with every time.  And why not?  It's a good story after all.

It is perhaps recognition of this sentiment, inflamed by the election result in the US, that has the Australian Liberal Party starting to look a little panicky.  Rather than the muscular, shiny-coated, unbeatable stallion of old, they're now acting more like a flighty gelding. While this transformation may have been initiated by some clever politics to compromise Liberal leader Tony Abbott's form of masculinity, the election results from the US have further tempered the gelder's knife. 

The sensitive new age Liberal Party

Romney ran too negative, too conflictual, too extreme, the pundits began saying late last week.  The theme - whether right or wrong - was picked up  by those in the Liberal Party with, shall we say, less than total commitment to the current leadership arrangements.  On Sunday morning, we were greeted with these comments from the allegorically-named Malcolm Turnbull:

"The lesson for everybody is that if you run off to the extreme in politics ... you lose the credibility of the middle ground.  Elections are won in the middle ground."

Turnbull's comments were in the context of calling on his Party's leader to release policy detail rather than continuing to engage in the increasingly shrill game of emotive point-scoring that is the current political debate.  On first pass, the message seems almost noble: policy first.  But as Turnbull parades around the mounting yard, I can't help but think that maybe there's something of a limp there.

"Elections are won in the middle ground."

The implications of this statement are at once saddening and worrying.  Saddening because it speaks to a politics without conviction - a space where ideology and belief are replaced with the creeping decay of compromise and comfort.  A politics of "the line of best fit", where the game is to be ordinary rather than to offer a truly distinct, organised, coherent and challenging vision that is "right" for the country, even if some may not share it.  A world where Voltaire might have said, "I'm not sure if I disagree with what you say until the focus group results are in."  But if failure of conviction simply makes one a bit wistful, its bastard child - poll-driven policy - should make us weep.

The problem is that "the middle ground" is a vague and movable concept - the kind of concept that may really only be defined in hindsight ... and, like all history, it is defined by the victor.  So when political parties detach from ideology and positions of principle, they end up chasing the middle ground rather than leading it.  Not only do they risk losing their identity in the process, they risk giving up the chance to make a better society (according to their own philosophy, of course).  The result is a society of cyclical stagnation, where other factors start to shape political direction.  As we move toward a future, or at least an era, of individualisation and atomisation, driven by technological and cultural forces that emphasise the importance of "me", the idea of political leaders "chasing ordinary" in this environment seems a little unnerving ... [fades to static]