The relentless spinning of the result of the election in Australia continues. In the New York Post John O'Sullivan's headline is "Bush wins again". I didn't even know Bush was running in the election here. O'Sullivan also writes:
Al Qaeda has received a serious setback, Kofi Annan a rebuke, France and Germany a disappointment---and the media elites a slap in the face so stinging that outside Australia Howard's victory has been a non-story.
This is just bizarre. Labor is very keen on wiping out Al Qaeda---the only difference with the government seems to be about tactics. I'm pretty sure that Al Qaeda probably doesn't care about the difference between the two parties. And Kofi Annan? I doubt if there was one single voter who was thinking about Kofi Annan when they voted. France? Germany? Why on earth would they even care? And the result got about as much coverage as Australian elections usually do overseas. The "media elites" (presumably O'Sullivan somehow excludes himself here) are upset at the result so they retaliate by giving the result the usual coverage? Come on.
Oddly enough, in an article written before the election, when he thought Labor might win, O'Sullivan wrote
Iraq has scarcely been an issue.
Somehow he forget to mention that in the article he wrote after the election. Funny, that.
Glenn Reynolds links to O'Sullivan's piece (not the one where O'Sullivan wrote that "Iraq has scarcely been an issue" but the other one) and complains that if Howard had lost it would have been a treated as a big story. Oh, quite possibly, and Reynolds would have been telling everyone about how Iraq was scarcely an issue in the election campaign instead of claiming that it was a referendum on Iraq.
The local pundits are spinning furiously also. In the Herald, Alan Anderson says "At the international level, John Howard's victory demonstrates that the hawkish leaders of the Anglosphere can fight and win elections post-Iraq, giving comfort to George Bush. "
I didn't realise that we were "post-" Iraq...
It's funny these rubes are saying that if Howard had lost it would be a big story when the conservative's failure to unseat the liberals in Canada a few months ago barely generated any interest in the US. And Iraq and Bush were somewhat minor issues. Gawd, they live in a world so disconnected from reality where their narrow view of events comes apart when viewed as part of the broader picture.