Mr Howard's populism.

Populism in a political leader can express itself in a variety of ways. In descending order of commendability and disinterestedness, one could include:

1) the desire to monitor the general will via opinion polls, referenda, talk-back radio, the comments of taxi drivers, &c, and act on it in most matters of serious public concern, as befits a democracy in which rule should be "of the people, by the people, for the people";

2) the political "killer instinct" that seizes on the opportunity to reflect popular opinion on a selective issueby-issue basis (the more sensational the issue the better), often in the run-up to an election, but at other times too, in order to stay on top of the swaying carousel of popular opinion and more effectively bias it in favour of one's own agendas, which will never be far removed from what is popular: a goodsand-services tax would never make it onto such an agenda, and nor would the Howard government's Work-Choices legislation--in respect of major issues like these, Howard is far from being a populist--but the "Tampa" would qualify, and so would the opportunity, seized on by John Howard, to thwart the current Queensland government's unpopular attempt to amalgamate local councils;

3) the will to power as expressed in the ruthless appeal to popular prejudice, ignorance and greed as levers to divide society and isolate one's political foes--demagoguery; and, most pathetically,

4) a "leading from behind" (the Roman emperor Vitellius was a good example of this--when the crowd turned, it turned on him).

The best populists combine popular appeal with a clear vision of the political future. Among the greatest of these was Julius Caesar, whose appeal went straight to the mass base (he was a genuine life-long populist, not a mere manipulator), by-passing the oligarchic Senate, and whose political vision and achievements over the two or three years of consolidated power he enjoyed were anything but ordinary. Peron in Argentina was a true populist with a clear political vision, but an economic disaster for his country.

Most political leaders of democracies fit into one of the above four categories at least some of the time. Populism is a matter of degree. In a representative democracy, as distinct from participatory democracies such as those in ancient Athens and present-day Switzerland, a degree of populism reflects a healthy recollection that the representative should represent in more than an abstract sense. In a participatory democracy there is less call for a populist leader because many of the important decisions are proposed and carried at the grass-roots level, so that there is no "system", no out-oftouch "them" against which a populist can appeal.

The more ideological a political leader, the less instinctively populist he or she will generally be--an interesting exception is the genuinely populist Juan Peron, who designed a complex ideology involving a continual four-way "mediation" on his part between the "vertical" forces of authority (up) and democracy (down), and the horizontal forces of individualism (right) and collectivism (left). In most ideology-driven systems a strong leadership principle will be built-in to the party or movement, authority flowing almost exclusively from the top down; such leaders often build-in to their political style as much symbolic populism as possible (Stalin as depicted out in the fields with his people in the official paintings of the 1930s, Hitler at his mass rallies, Mao with his Cultural Revolution and the "right to rebel", Khaddafi with his Green Revolution and its system of councils), while not genuinely consulting the base except occasionally via plebiscites on issues they know they will easily win.

Only when in danger or utterly isolated will a pretend-populist ideologue modify ideology to reflect the popular will (Stalin's appeal to great-Russian nationalism and his freeing of the priests during the Great Patriotic War, Mussolini's description of his Salo Republic (1943-45) as "definitely Left", Lenin's New Economic Plan in the early 1920s). These are dictators hooked in to their own more-or-less complex systems of ideas, which are forced down onto the base. Robespierre for all his theorising about "the people" was not a populist; General Boulanger was. Most populists are sceptical of theorists and welcome mechanisms that give voice and power to the electorate--citizen-initiated referenda are an example of populist politics in action. Regionalism is frequently populist in spirit because based so strongly in culture and language or dialect--the regional-centred, culture-affirming novels of Maurice Barres (Colette Baudoche especially) provide interesting reading in this regard, and Barres was an ardent backer of Boulanger.

Few Australian prime ministers have shown much trace of populism in their styles, though some of the State premiers have, particularly Sir Henry Bolte and Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Sir Robert Menzies showed next to none, and so did Malcolm Fraser. Menzies spoke for the "forgotten people", who constituted a majority lying in between the rich and powerful on the one hand and the trade unions on the other, but while Menzies had policies and programmes to enhance the interests of this broad "forgotten" section of society, he never condescended to emulating their "style" or "voice", remaining supremely himself, one of the establishment who had chosen to speak for them, not one of them. Both Menzies and Fraser came to politics with a set of carefully thought-out ideas expanded over time and by-and-large consistently applied--ideas that all flowed from the top down. John Gorton had the common touch but was not a populist in terms of policy, though his strong nationalism had populist overtones.

Gough Whitlam's political style was more imperial than anything, and his strongest appeal was to the "clever" section of the middle class and the white-collar unionists. Bob Hawke cultivated a highly populist style but his government was not oriented to reflect the "popular will"; if it had been, many of its reforms would not have been undertaken, and then of course many of Hawke's closest political friendships were with the richer end of the business community, out of preference, one felt, rather than necessity. Keating was in no sense a populist, but driven by ideas, all of them flowing very much from the top down.

The only Australian prime minister in this writer's lifetime who could be described as a populist is John Howard. He was describing himself from the late-1980s as the most conservative leader the Liberal Party had ever had, but "conservative" is in some important ways a misleading term for him. A populist is of course not a conservative in the way in which he operates, but a radical articulating a popular mood, especially, though not only, for rejecting unpopular programmes, systems or taxes "imposed" on the people by an unrepresentative "them".

By "conservative" Howard meant that he represented the broad conservative values of the Australian middle class, and there is no doubt that he is the strongest "values" conservative we have had if one restricts the operation of "values" to the moral and family spheres. He can also fairly be described as a cultural conservative--one who values "living traditions" of an analogous (though not identical) kind to those that inspired Edmund Burke, the defining traditions for a cohesive society rich in memories and shared experience--the exact opposite of the spiritually un-anchored cosmopolitan-style society which multiculturalism would seem sooner or later to entail.

Many of the fiercest enemies of multiculturalism in the West are in fact immigrants with a strong sense of culture and tradition, who feel instinctively that multiculturalism in a country like England, Holland or Australia must tend finally towards no culture at all, since it devalues the host culture, and indeed every culture, in equalising everything. In this particular respect a cultural conservative may find himself on common ground with radical Islamists.

But while Howard is a cultural and values conservative, he is also a self-defined nationalist, a centralist far more devastatingly than Whitlam, and a constitutional radical who is killing off the last vestiges of effective federalism in this country. We still have the same old constitution we always had, the one the people have shown such reluctance to change, but its federalism, which was its very heart, has been so "read down" in defiance of the constitution's original meaning and the original understanding that underlay it, so transformed through government policy and High Court underwriting of that policy, that it has become a hollow shell.

In a healthy polity the government is responsible for raising the money it spends, and there should be no taxation without representation, but in Australia, because of the (shamefully willing) incremental loss by the States of their sovereign powers, this nexus has been broken, for the States now raise very little of the money they spend. Thus, most of the money spent by the government of Victoria is raised by taxpayers who have no representation in the parliament of Victoria. In Canada (another federal system), on the other hand, the Provinces raise in income taxes the money they spend (there is an adjustment mechanism to obviate imbalances), and the same goes for the individual States in the United States. But in Australia Queenslanders are taxed to provide the money spent by the parliament of Victoria--taxation without representation. What kind of populist, one might ask, is happy to condone and exacerbate the disenfranchisement, in this regard, of five-sixths of the Australian electorate?

The answer is, a hybrid-populist, one who is at the same time a cultural and values conservative and a constitutional radical, a centralist prime minister in a federal system for which (he estimates correctly) most Australians have as little time as himself, and of which they have less understanding. The taxation-without-representation argument just adduced would go over most of their heads. It's not important to them even did they follow it, because State governments are not seen as important--we're all Australians, aren't we? The sad fact is that the federal system is neither widely understood nor popular. John Howard knows that. It is no contradiction then, in that regard, to call Howard a genuine populist, but rather a confirmation of his qualifications as a populist.

Howard did not decide to be a populist. He has the born instinct for the popular action combined with the willingness to act fast to capture the power inherent in the critical moment (the "Tampa" moment, the moment of the release of the "Little Children are Sacred" report into Aboriginal child abuse in the Northern Territory--in both of which instances, I would argue, he was perfectly right to act as he did).

Howard is also a populist in the sense that he has never forgotten his roots in the lower middle class, and has remained tuned-in to that part of Australia in ways Menzies or Fraser never could be. It has been said that "When you listen to John Laws you're listening to Australia", and John Howard knows it's true. The John Laws audience is Howard's natural constituency, viscerally so. To any listener, and I have been one on occasion, it is obvious that Howard is at home with those listeners, and it is just as obvious that he does not belong on "your" (read "their") ABC.

Because Howard is a cultural and values conservative, with an attachment to the unshifting ground of human nature and human experience, and because his roots are in the hardworking, blue-collar, no-nonsense part of Australia, he is largely inaccessible to the manufacturers of transitory ideas like multiculturalism and "global warming" (though out of political expediency he has "bent" on that). He knows that culture comes from the base; it is not something that can be orchestrated by salaried or heavily-subsidised "conductors" of the kind that sustain and are sustained by the multicultural industry in this country. He believes in the institutions of marriage, the home and the family, he believes in a personal God, and, without trying, reflects the common sense of the common man, which does not sound like a compliment until one weighs the alternative kinds of "sense". Yes, he is an opportunist and a bender and breaker of truth when it suits, which is to say a born politician. To an Australian federalist Howard might seem a dangerous enemy, and not particularly preferable to Kevin Rudd as prime minister, but as an effective cultural and values conservative, and a populist of the better sort, Howard is a rare thing in our national political culture and not to be tossed out unthinkingly.

The potential replacements at the head of the federal Liberal Party, Peter Costello and Malcolm Turnbull, have not defined themselves as strong federalists, can hardly be called cultural and value conservatives, and have no populist touch about them. They are liberals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

PHILIP AYRES has held professorial positions at Monash University, Boston University and Vassar College, and is the author of numerous articles and biographies, including Malcolm Fraser (1987), Douglas Mawson (1999), Owen Dixon (2003) and Prince of the Church: Patrick Francis Moran, 1830-1911 (released in July this year).