Extract from ABC News
American politics, at its best, produces great spectacle and rhetoric — never more so, perhaps, than on a presidential inauguration day.
It was true again this week with the inauguration of President Joe Biden. The sense of renewal and a new beginning was only starker when you considered the drama that had taken place at the very spot where Biden took the oath of office: the storming of the Capitol on January 6; an historic second impeachment of a president a week later; and, finally, a national sigh of relief that four years of presidential mayhem was appropriately ending with a show of bad grace by Donald Trump.
The potential implications for Australia of a new regime in Washington have generally been canvassed, of course: the United States getting back on board on the Paris agreement on climate change and a wholesale shift in its energy policies being a conspicuous example.
But the change in Washington also gives us one of those moments in time to consider how the underlying tectonic plates of Australian and world politics have shifted in recent years.
Sure, there is the pandemic now. And recession. But the heavy dominance of global terrorism has taken a back seat to these crises, and to the spectre of right-wing terror and insurrection at home for the United States.
Debt and deficits don't quite matter as they once did. Nor does inflation. China, and its influence, seems to be everywhere.
In Australia, the Federal Government, for the first time in decades, is forced to share the day-to-day management of issues — and the politics — with the states, rather than simply having a government-versus-opposition fist fight with federal Labor.
We don't have a cult of personality around our national leader, but he has a dominance — in part flowing from the fact he will not address and replace the many weak and politically damaged members of his ministry.
We don't have a backlash against incompetence dealing with the pandemic: we have done much better than the US, the UK and many other countries.
But from now on, we will also not have the malign point of comparison that, no matter how badly our politicians behave, it will only be seen as better than that of the US president; the daily encouragement that politicians can get away with, or even be rewarded by, not telling the truth.
The many hats of a national leader
It seemed easy to just brush past accountability in a world where, according to the ongoing tally by the Washington Post, Trump made more than 30,000 misleading claims in four years.
The outgoing president removed any last vestiges of shame from political spin.
Equally important to ponder, though, is whether what has happened to United States politics, and particularly to the Republican Party, has given our own political leaders pause to consider the long-term ramifications of particular political strategies, and what holding positions of leadership can involve.
It is too easy to see Trump as an aberration, a once-off demagogue who captured the anger of a particular group in the community, and amplified a sense of grievance and division.
But he was part of a trajectory of political tactics going back to the last century: a deliberate erosion of belief in the capacity and good intent of government and its representatives; of its role in making everything worse in people's lives; of pitting one group against another.
Trump faced a second impeachment motion in the US House of Representatives — and a possible trial in the Senate — for giving his supporters both permission and encouragement, as a leader, to do what they did.
In Australia, our leaders give implicit permission for whacky conspiracy theories and misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines to be spread by backbenchers — who take their strategies straight from the Trump playbook — while those same leaders spend their time and taxpayers' money insisting that public confidence in vaccines is crucial.
In his inauguration speech this week, Biden said: "We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal".
"We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts. If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we're willing to stand in the other person's shoes, as my mom would say, just for a moment stand in their shoes."
So how does Morrison fit into this?
Biden reminded us that being a national leader has many facets, including being explainer-in-chief, conciliator-in-chief, truth-teller-in-chief.
Which raises the question: how often does our Prime Minister — or over the holidays, the man who filled in for him, Michael McCormack — ask himself what it might feel like to stand in the shoes of any particular group in the community before he opens his mouth?
In Queensland this week, Scott Morrison was putting himself in the shoes of locals in Gladstone who apparently aren't happy with the Queensland Government's idea of putting returned Australians into quarantine in mining camps in the area.
But he seemed to have a bit more trouble putting himself in the shoes of Indigenous people who have a problem with Australia Day (not to mention his continuing loose grip on the basics of Australian history).
He was asked whether he was "a bit concerned that students don't know enough about Australian ... history".
Morrison replied: "You know, on Australia Day, it's all about acknowledging how far we've come. You know, when those 12 ships turned up in Sydney all those years ago, it wasn't a particularly flash day for the people on those vessels either."
(Perhaps the 12 ships in the PM's mind included the 11 in the First Fleet plus the Endeavour — while it was somehow still circumnavigating Australia? Or something.)
"I think what that day to this demonstrates is how far we've come as a country," he said.
"And I think that's why it's important that we mark it in that way. It's not about that day so much. It's about how far we've come together since that day.
"You know, you can't just airbrush things that have happened in the past. I think one of the great things about Australia — and I think we're respected for this — is we're pretty upfront and honest about our past.
"The national apologies that have been put in place shows that we're prepared to deal with our past."
It was bordering on jibberish. And stood in stark contrast to his need to comment on Cricket Australia's decision to remove references to Australia Day from the names of matches taking place on January 26, which he said was "pretty ordinary".
"Pretty ordinary", unfortunately, has been the tone of too much of our politics for years.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
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