Glenn Milne, Chairman Rudd, a little phrenology, and reaping the whirlwind

(Above: Charlon Heston playing Glenn Milne in an epic biblical story of whirlwinds, plagues of locusts, swearing and waters turning red with blood).

Back in the good old days - I think I've mentioned how I loathe people who start by mentioning the good old days - a sharp analyst could take a look at the shape of a person's skull, and know everything worth knowing.

The science - it wasn't an art - was called phrenology, and if want a classic study of how deluded people can become when offered up a form of quackery, why not read a little more here.

Or you could always read Glenn Milne, as he scribbles Rude Kevin Rudd will reap whirlwind.

Milne doesn't even need a skull, he just uses photographs, to examine entrails, determine signs and portents, find hidden significance in the runes.

There were some revealing political pictures in last week's edition of The Australian Financial Review: you know, worth a thousand words and all that.

They came to us in the form of the paper's annual "Power Edition" - a magazine that features the most powerful people in the country. The portraits I liked most were those that showed some self-deprecation: Ken Henry, the Treasury chief, looking wistfully at the ceiling, as if he wished he were with the wombats he cares for in his spare time.

Kevin Rudd's bright, impossibly boyish chief of staff, Alister Jordan, looking at his boots, smiling, hand crossing forehead, as if to ask: "How did I get here?"

Mark Arbib, the young factional warrior from the NSW Right - to whom Rudd owes his Prime Ministership - coming at you out of the frame, handling a soccer ball as bald as his head.

Rudd's picture was in a different category altogether. It was bigger than all the others, of course, perched in a chair looking straight into the lens, his hand fussing with a pen. What struck you, though, was the sense of satisfaction that came off the page. The projection that "this is where I deserve to be and you had better get used to the idea".

Well I guess it's a step up in witch doctoring from taking a detailed look at chicken livers or tea leaves at the bottom of the cup.

But I wonder if Milne realizes that this kind of projection, based on pictures, photographs, whatever, usually says more about the projectee than about the thing examined. Now we don't have to wander down the path of rorschach tests (here), or even remember Jung's use of the mandala in analysis (here) to realize that a picture might tell a thousand words, but a thousand words of blather based on a photo tells a hell of a lot more about Milne and his fixations, fears and loathings.

In short, he loathes Kevin Rudd, and he can't wait for the whirlwind to arrive, for a hard rain to fall, for the radioactive glow to arrive. Like an old testament prophet, Milne stands astride the mountain, hurling thunderbolts at Chairman Rudd:

OK. We all take bad photos. But the point here is that this picture reveals a side of Rudd which, behind the scenes, is increasingly beginning to rankle his colleagues in government, as well as across the broader labour movement.

There was much debate last week surrounding The Sunday Telegraph's revelations about Rudd's recent foul-mouthed outburst at factional leaders. Most of the talkback was about the swearing and whether it mattered.

For political insiders, the real point of the story was two-fold: firstly, it raised the question of whether Rudd's calm, rational and church-going persona actually matched the private man; or whether this image was manufactured.

Ah yes, all you talk back folk understand nothing, up against the sharp insights of political insiders like Glenn Milne. For they've discovered that political images are manufactured, and that sometimes inside the manufactured image there are real people with tempers and foul language. Fuck me dead, how I'd love to have the capacity for that kind of insight, and all drawn from a detailed examination of a photograph.

More importantly, the story marked the first time in government that Rudd's own side had given him up. The faction leaders walked out of the meeting and complained long and loud to their colleagues about how arrogant and authoritarian Rudd had become. And then someone who agreed with them told The Sunday Telegraph because they were sick of it, too.

This is a warning shot across Rudd's bow. And there will be more to come. Within the union movement, too, there is growing dissatisfaction, even from previous supporters.

"I can't stand him," was the verdict of one senior union leader last week. "Rudd's problem is that he behaves like an American President - as if he's above the party and the movement.

"Everything he does is for his own, personal ambition."

But why bother quoting anonymous senior union leaders? Why doesn't Milne come clean by simply saying how much he hates Chairman Rudd? Why does he have to dress it up and disguise it as some kind of analysis, when the analysis has the weight of feather down? Well I guess that would be unseemly when snideness and personality sniping will do the job just as well.

The interesting thing about this is that the charge against Rudd is not policy-based: it's about his personal style. Certainly, there have been policy-based tensions with the union movement over Rudd's issues - like his failed promise that no-one would be worse off, under Julia Gillard's award modernisation.

"Broadly, though, we've done all right," says the same union leader, who now can't abide Rudd.

Which is to say Milne can't be bothered leading with policy issues. No, he wants to trawl through Rudd's prissy style because he can't stand the prissy fucker, and the way he swears in private and gets away with it, and shouts at air hostesses over sandwiches and should be called to account.

Never mind that Milne himself has been known to display a little aggro in public and go the biff. I guess that's just a little human failing, which doesn't mean human failings can be tolerated in others, at least if you hate their prissy guts.

So, put simply, what aggravates his colleagues and union leaders is what they see as his prissy, self-centred, top-down, "nobody's right, but me" approach to government. It wasn't always that way. He used to have the ability to take himself down. Listening to those who interact with him now, you get the impression that this trait has been all but obliterated by high office.

See? It's nothing to do with Milne, it's all to do with Rudd's colleagues and union leaders. Even though Milne started his column with a tale of a photograph that struck him as revealing how Rudd was in a photo fussing with a pen, exuding a sense of self satisfaction.

But now the man has been ruined by his arrogance, his self-centred top down administration, it's time to don the garb of the prophet.

Now when approaching the guru at the top of the mountain, firstly you must come armed with insightful questions:

So, will Rudd be able to weather these internal criticisms? Probably, at least for a while. Right now, his total dominance is built on the twin pillars of his economic success, which feeds into his phenomenal poll numbers, and the fact that he has turned ALP tradition on its head, when it comes to the appointment of his ministry.

Ah, so the whirlwind at the moment is probably somewhere around Bourke. How disappointing. But still there must be more signs of outrage suggesting that the whirlwind is on the move.

Until Rudd came along, it was the Labor caucus that elected the ministry. But, in Opposition, he unilaterally declared that he would be both choosing the frontbench and allocating portfolios. An outraged caucus, desperate to win, bit its collective lip.

Yes!! An outraged collective lip.

The effect has been to make Rudd probably the most powerful Labor Prime minister in history. It means his Cabinet and ministry are totally beholden to his judgement on their performance. Frontbenchers rarely argue the policy point with him, Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner being a notable exception. This subservience leaches all the way down to the caucus, whose major pre-occupation is a second term. So, while ever the polls tell them that Rudd will deliver on this objective, they will tolerate his autocratic style.

Why am I suddenly reminded of Louis XIV? No better, I'm reminded of Louis XVI and that dreadful woman Marie Antoinette and boy did they reap a whirlwind with their autocratic style. Oh yes comrades there might be abject lickspittle subservience, but then at some point, the worm turns and then there's a fine blood-letting.

Well here's hoping, because if Rudd keeps on giving the peasants cake, who knows how long we might have to put up with him. And then the cracks in Milne might start to show. Oh wait, got that wrong, the cracks are starting to show in the statue they've erected in honor of that deviant arrogant Ruddstra:

Given that fact, it's remarkable that some cracks are starting to show. There is no love for Rudd on the backbench. In all probability, he'll win again. But the moment he faces a credible Opposition Leader, or the economy sours, and those poll numbers start to slip, he will reap the whirlwind of his disdain for his own colleagues who put him where he is today.

Sob. Oh no, say it ain't so. There's no love, but in all probability he'll win again!! We've had to endure all that blather to endure the news that the odds favor Rudd. The chicken livers were sound, the mandala exquisitely symbolic, the phrenological analysis concluding that the skull is well shaped. Rudd with a well shaped skull?

Come on prophet, don't leave us with that kind of doom-laden analysis. You mean we have to hope for a terrorist strike, or a million boat people, or the economy collapsing like an over heated souffle? You mean we have to want the world to fuck up to rid of us this arrogant photograph of a man?

Well at least give us a dire imprecation, a muttered oath, a hope for doom and gloom.

Early indications are that, when it comes, the whirlwind will be savage.

Yes, that's it, that works. A savage whirlwind. Dust everywhere, gumming up the works.

What's that?

"Return evil for evil to no one. Provide fine things in the sight of all men. If possible, as far as it depends upon you, be peaceable with all men. Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but yield place to the wrath; for it is written: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says Jehovah.” But, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by doing this you will heap fiery coals upon his head.” Do not let yourself be conquered by the evil, but keep conquering the evil with the good." -Romans 12:17-21

Oh damn you, you smug arrogant Christians, with your do gooder ways in public and your evil swearing ways in private. And your really bad photographs.

Well Milne and I know that in the real world it's an eye for an eye:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

What's that? And not be allowed to blather in a newspaper column about nothing in particular and fear and loathing of Rudd in general?

Well enough of all that nonsense. Bring me the skull of Chairman Rudd so it can be given proper phrenological analysis. Yes it has to be flensed of all flesh. And stick the brain in brine in a jar. Maybe we can download it to a computer and use it to develop a program designed to teach Mandarin in ten easy steps.

Sorry, went a little mad there, but that happens when you read Glenn Milne, and think you're going to get political analysis and are instead swept back to the days of the Old Testament or the Delphic Oracle.

Of course a whirlwind will come. In politics, just as with dust storms, they always do. But ain't it funny that this cheer squad, which this week offers up only phrenology as political science, is likely to end up with a woman in the chair instead of Chairman Rudd. Lordy, however will they cope with that ...

(Below: when analyzing photographs, make sure you use these handy analytical tools, as deployed by political insiders who are in the know and know about these things because ... they know).