We're All Howardians Now

KEVIN Rudd's visit abroad has been a success so far. Generally good for Australia, good for our already solid reputation around the world and good for the Prime Minister himself. Traditionally, this is the case for PMs doing the post-election Grand Tour. The purpose of the GT is multifaceted: to showcase both the new incumbent's savoir-faire and the country's peaceful, democratic continuity - inter alia, the latter is a saleable quantity in the world economy; to consolidate Australia's connection to allied and culturally like-minded nations, with whom it feels most at home; to shore up relationships that are still culturally new, especially in Asia; finally, to signify through words and gestures the leitmotifs of the new premiership. Barring outrageous statements, discernible uncertainty, appalling dress sense or an attempt to grope the French President's wife, the Grand Tour is usually successful.

The leitmotifs do matter and they're ideologically plangent for those with ears to listen. To extend and conclude the musical metaphor, Mr Rudd's themes are off-key for the left but quite on-song in Howardian terms. The pre-eminence of the American stopover and the amiable ease with which the Australia-US alliance was reconstituted again, in George W. Bush's Oval Office, are fruits of John Howard's efforts. The left might still be thrilled Mr Howard isn't the one on the six o'clock news - sitting down with the American President - but deep down they surely realise their Lathamite fantasies of a Chavez Lite foreign policy are stone cold dead. Post-Surge, even the Iraq "withdrawal" has been gutted of the Jim Cairns theatrical potency they hoped it would carry. Mr Rudd has accentuated the continuing importance of the War on Terror and he even talked up the the Iranian menace this week.

Australia's involvement in the Iraq War was always both militarily important in specific endeavours as well as strategically important for buttressing the mutual political will of the Coalition itself. That's the way warfare has to work for democracies. Many critics dismissed the first-named factor - the value of the ADF's missions in theatre - and were indifferent to the second. But now Kevin Rudd realises that every single contribution to combating terrorism matters - and that the multilateral acceptance of moral responsibility is crucial.

Again following his predecessor's example - and Alexander Downer's - that's why he's trying to convince the Europeans to pull their weight in Afghanistan. However much at odds this is with the abandonment of combat troop multilateralism in Iraq, the Prime Minister deserves credit for running on the subject. That he has done so in tandem with the US and the British is another manifestation of a welcome spirit of continuity - one also likely to infuriate the left. Mr Rudd's dogmatic insistence on Staying The Course in Afghanistan and encouraging free trade outcomes from the Doha Round - for Australia's sake but also as something of a personal embassy for Washington - demonstrates how different he is from the nominally familial social democrats of Europe. That he has to be such a creature is an evolutionary reminder of just how Howardian the Australian political ecosystem has become.

This is even more obvious vis-a-vis the PM's social democrat cousins in the US, despite the phone-calls and photo-ops. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not only touting Keynesian magic to "solve" the housing bubble blowout - with massive expenditures, new regulations and bailouts - they're also competing with one another to claim the title of Fiercest and Earliest Loather of NAFTA. The truth is that on trade policy and - seemingly - the War on Terror, Kevin Rudd would find John McCain far more companionable. He might even be inclined to go further than the Arizona senator on tax cuts and welfare reform. Mr Rudd, then, should be pleased with his excursion so far. However, his own presence - an all-important factor in his imagination - cannot become normative. He should mend fences himself in Tokyo and New Delhi and then leave something for Stephen Smith to actually do.