Greg Melleuish, Chairman Rudd, and worrying about words and essays

Greg Melleuish is fiendisly cunning, no doubt about that, and with Stick to day job and hold the essays, he reaches a Fu Manchu level of cleverness.

Who better than a history academic to tell politicians to stop writing essays, compared to my plaintive plea about having too much homework trying to keep up with all their excessive verbiage.

Now you might think that it's strange that an academic should berate the art of essay writing, when it remains (in one form or another) the basis for much academic discourse, at least in the wretched area of the arts.

But then Melleuish seems to have a strange contempt for words, even as he writes words for his column in The Australian.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Melleuish is disturbed by Chairman Rudd writing down his thoughts so we might know what he thinks. I don't have much of an objection to that - my real objection is finding out what he does really apparently think and believe. That's the scary bit.

Compound and crank that up to eleven when you find out what Tony Abbott actually apparently believes. At book length. It was a huge relief when Malcolm Turnbull could only clock up just under 3,000 words. Now that's an essay.

But Melleuish is terribly anxious about leaders who write while in office:

The only example of leaders in power devoting themselves to issuing manifestos on such matters would appear to be totalitarian regimes. Comrade leaders, such as Joseph Stalin, issued books of political doctrine indicating what the population was to think on particular matters. 

Well I guess we can overlook the likes of Theodore Roosevelt who wrote over forty books (the total on the tape varies according to who does the tallying), and while in office published Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, and Good Hunting, while doing political things like setting a Guinness world record for shaking 8,150 hands and picking up a Nobel Peace Prize.

You can hardly count paens of praise to hunting as a political thesis, now can you? It was so much more sensible when John F. Kennedy spent his leisure hours (outside of organizing the Bay of Pigs) fucking anything that moved. Now there's a politician we can understand and trust.

Which is why the spectre, the mystery of Chairman Rudd haunts Melleuish:

Why, then, is Rudd devoting so much time and effort to writing and publishing his essays? Is it because he has so much extra time as he requires so few hours of sleep every night? Or is there something more to this behaviour?

I believe there may be three reasons, perhaps connected, for Rudd's behaviour. The first is his essays represent the ultimate triumph of words over things in politics. 

Now roll that phrase around in your head a little. The triumph of words over things in politics. As if somehow words and things are separate. Well I guess if you call things things, rather than call them by their words, they are. But isn't a rose is a rose is a rose? Except by any other name, when it might become a thing?

Centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli argued that appearance is the key if one wishes to be a successful political leader. It is far more important to appear to have certain admirable qualities than to possess them.

Contemporary politics understands this Machiavellian principle, which is why the politicians of our age are so devoted to spin. The trick is to ensure a favourable appearance is conveyed to the public. Dealing with the reality is a secondary consideration. Taken to its logical conclusion, according to this view the only things that matter in politics are words and how they are used.

This is of course a misrepresentation of the sensible advice that Machiavelli gave to likely rulers in The Prince (a digital copy of which you can pick up here at Project Gutenberg). He had a lot of words to expend on things, especially taxes:

Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; so that a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property, and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, he is affected by the very first trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the first danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw back from it, he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.

By golly, old Niccolo is sounding like a low taxing Republican. 

But back to words and things. Why even today we had that pious prattling Polonius Gerard Henderson assuring us that just because Rudd, Costello and Howard all kept referring to Australia's Judaeo-Christian heritage, it was perfectly possible they actually believed what they were saying.

You see, even Machiavelli didn't believe in the cheap cynical application of spin as the ultimate form of politics. He understood ruling was a tricky business and required more and cleverer bits of business.

Nothing makes a prince so much esteemed as great enterprises and setting a fine example.

Which I guess means things, and you might care to read the rest of Chapter XXI on how a prince might conduct himself so as to gain renown. Which is why Machiavelli has hung around for centuries as a good read, along with other tomes like The Art of War. It ain't all spin if you be king.

But back to Melleuish:

The second reason is Rudd is contemplating his place in Australian history. He is leaving behind a series of works that can be used to write the story of his time as leader. Australian intellectuals, especially of the left-wing variety, are fond of politicians who are intellectuals.

It should not be difficult to find one who is willing to use the collected works of Rudd to write a hagiographical account of his time as Prime Minister.

Well yes and using the same logic it shouldn't take long to find an intellectual of the right wing variety who is willing to use the collected works of Rudd to write a damning study of the indolent failure that was Rudd's prime ministership.

The third reason is these essays are part of an extended job application. Given his propensity for displaying himself on the world stage, it is plausible that Rudd sees his time as Australian Prime Minister as but a prelude to achieving a position that will mark him as a world leader. He seems to believe he is meant for greater things.

Ah yes, the world leader theory, which saw Tony Blair become a special peace envoy to the Middle East with huge success. 

The best you can say about this theory is that it is as delusional as any delusion Chairman Rudd might have about himself. If you elevate your enemy to the running of the UN and its network of black helicopters, chances are Rudd's just as likely to turn into Gareth Evans and disappear to Europe.

Speaking of words, is "plausible" just another way of saying "spin"?

My own theory as to why Melleuish has developed this triptych of theories? It's because he's indignant Rudd, a notorious policy wonk, occasionally takes time out for wonkery, and the commentariat commentators can't stand a wonk like him pissing on their policy turf. Yep, it's politics as a kind of simian turf war, and the Ruddster has strayed into the wrong section of the zoo.

Again, one must ask if writing essays on the state of the world is the appropriate thing for a leader of a country to be doing. There are times when politicians should be reflective and develop ideas that can be used to improve and reform the world.

Except of course when they might actually be in power and able to do something about it.

But ain't it funny, this toffy, snooty looking down on the art of the essay, especially when written in the form of a short essay.

The idea that essays and words might actually mean something has perhaps been worn down by a lifetime spent marking the dross of students. The thought that quiet reflection before action might improve the quality, effect and impact of the action has to be dismissed out of hand.

What we want is a headlong rush to action, an inability to think, or reflect, before getting out and doing things. Or stuff. Or whatever. After all, it worked so well with George W. Bush, so here's when a politician should write:

The first is when one is out of office and reflecting on the reasons for being in that situation. The second is when one has left behind the world of politics and is able to ruminate on the significance of one's time in office.

When a leader is in office, they should be doing things, trying to solve the problems the country is encountering. It is worrying when a leader seems to be more interested in writing essays than taking action.

Say what? It only takes ten or twenty thousand words to get Greg Melleuish worrying about a leader?

Why he must be gobsmacked with hysterical anxiety about Tony Abbott, ostensibly someone taking care of a shadow ministry.

Perhaps he should look at it this way. If all he's got to worry about Chairman Rudd, or the state of the country, is that it's worrying Rudd writes essays, then we all have nothing to worry about. 

Perhaps instead of worrying about a couple of essays designed to feed the chooks - in much the same way that Joh Bjelke-Petersen used to feed his - Melleuish can either find some real reasons to worry about Chairman Rudd (there must be a few), or instead worry about an academic who worries about the writing of essays and the use of words, as if somehow they were a poisoned chalice from which none should drink.

That's what worries me, if I could only summon up the energy to be worried about worriers.