Peter Hartcher, former Chairman Rudd's underpants, and we're not here to write, we're here to go mad ...

Today is tabloid day in Sydney, when the Sydney Morning Herald puts down its thin chipboard veneer of respectability and turns into the sluttish Sun-Herald, out on the real estate and eastern suburbs social circuits for a glad-handing good time.

The only time I actually get to see the Sunday rags involves a trip to the car wash, which is to say rarely, but still the whinging, whining splash on today's digital edition, brooding about Australia's soccer campaign (above), swept me right back to the nineteen fifties and the cicadas chirping and the paper boy throwing some extremely useful bird cage lining over the fence before we all raced off to buy lollies.

It was the devious Dutch wot done us in with their dour peppermint scoffing hot chocolate loving ways (and don't get me started on the wicked weed and the loose attitude to sex and Dutch situation comedies, a most paradoxical and peculiar notion) ...

Oh yes, Australia hurrah. damn them furriners.

Never mind, I was reminded of why we're here while reading Rivka Galchen in Harper's on Robert Walser, a novelist who retired from scribbling to spend the last years of his life in insane asylums, and his most famous quote inside the loony bin:

I'm not here to write. I'm here to be mad.

Indeed. We're here to be mad. (And sorry it's behind the Harper's paywall, here, as is Christopher Ketham's very funny portrait of the New York state senate, its total corruption and impotence, in The Albany Handshake, which suddenly makes you realise that there are other models for NSW state Labor around the world).

But speaking of madness, that naturally leads us to Mark Latham, who thankfully is also locked up behind a paywall, and whom I only get to read when that bizarre contradiction, a business person who catches trains, leaves a copy of the Australian Financial Review on a train seat because the dross is too heavy to carry around.

Or when The Australian, bitchy as ever, quotes him, as in A source who kept The SMH on message:

A defining feature of Rudd's prime ministership was his constant briefing of Hartcher on the behind-the-scenes processes behind big decisions, invariably to glorify his own contribution. As one caucus wag told me earlier this year, "Kevin doesn't change his underpants these days without telling Hartcher about it." It would have been obvious to his colleagues (Gillard in particular) that the Herald's story came from the PM's office, a stunning valedictory to Rudd's misreading of his colleagues and his ineptitude as a caucus tactician.

Which brings us to the strange case of Peter Hartcher, and his clear emotional involvement in the decline and fall of former Chairman Rudd, and his clear disdain for Julia Gillard.

I must say I almost bit through my toast and ruined my bite when I read this little offering:

She's a first-class political talent, as smart as any man ...

Why Peter, that's downright noble of you, to acknowledge in certain rare unlikely and imponderable circumstances, a woman can be as smart as any man. Hartcher compounds his folly by rounding out his par thus:

She's a first-class political talent, as smart as any man, as tough as any man, as able as any man. But is that cause enough to cancel out a prime minister's popular mandate?

Clearly all the coaching about the best colour of underdaks to wear left a lasting emotional impression. Popular mandate? Remember that remark ...

Come on down Henry Higgins, your spiritual mentoring for men continues to resonate down the centuries.

You can read all that and more in Julia Keneally? PM must avoid being factional puppet, Hartcher's offering a couple of days ago.

But if you read Hartcher over the last week - yes, I know, why would you bother, but remember we're not here to write, we're here to be mad - you can find the same kind of skew that would make most punters want to put a beer mat under the legs of the billiard table to fix the balance.

The short way to do this is to use the Herald's convenient listing of opinion pieces under his name, Peter Hartcher, and then immerse yourself in such offerings as If in doubt throw another leader on the barbie, or How Abbott found an unexpected ally over climate change in the Gang of Four.

In the first column, Hartcher embarks on the bizarre thesis that Labor had just wasted a prime minister, "in every sense", using up a perfectly electable leader prematurely. To go with this imponderable line, you perhaps must first be able to advise on which underpants to wear, before advising the wearer to get out in the ring, and moida da bum, knock him out in the first, and other such delusionary warnings offered to pugilists before they find themselves flat on their pants with a broken nose in the fifteenth round.

If Gillard had stayed firm in her resolve to pace herself, Rudd would still be prime minister. But she changed her mind on Wednesday and Rudd was history. What a waste.

Spare me days and knock me down with a feather. Former Chairman Rudd as a waste? Get out those political commentary and real estate pages, I have a cockatoo cage to line ...

In his second column, Hartcher explains how the demonic redhead ran former Chairman Rudd and his wonderful climate change policy off the rails, and thereby ruined the government, proving yet again that colorful pink underpants are simply no match for a woman on the march, seeing as how Rudd must have rolled over and just muttered "yes, Julia, whatever you say dear" before killing off his moral mission for our lifetime:

Although she had her factional origins in the Left of the Labor Party, Ms Gillard is a pragmatic politician who is prepared to abandon progressive policies.

You see, it's all her fault, and she's not an idealist, a romantic, and a wearer of underpants like the former Chairman, though grudgingly it has to be admitted she's as smart as any man. Perhaps even smarter ... in the sense that only a redhead knows how to be a super bitch.

But let's get back to the main game, and hubris, because you see it seems that Peter Hartcher himself, and not the red head, was the trigger that fired the bullet that brought the PM down, and he explained everything yesterday in Dark clouds that spelt doom for a prime minister.

Running through the plot and the cabal of plotters determined to bring the Ruddster down, Hartcher arrives at a climactic moment:

Unexpectedly, the plotters found a potential trigger on the front-page of the Herald on Wednesday. With my colleague Phillip Coorey, I wrote a report disclosing Alister Jordan's soundings of caucus support for the PM. It said: "Mr Jordan's soundings, conducted in the past month with Mr Rudd's knowledge, reveal three key aspects of the prime minister's position.

"First, he is deeply concerned about the security of his grip on the prime ministership. Second, he does not necessarily fully trust the public assurances of his deputy, Gillard, that she is not interested in the leadership. And third, he does still enjoy solid support in the caucus."

The Right faction leaders seized on this.

So there you have it. The rest, as we say, pausing solemnly to take in a deep breath, and consider the imponderable momentousness of the occasion, is history.

Drawing himself up to his full forlorn height, and never mind that in the very same article, Hartcher identifies a variety of right wing plotters including Bill Shorten in Melbourne, Gary Gray in WA and Don Farrell in SA, he delivers this withering conclusion:

Sussex Street has done this before, to premiers and even opposition leaders.

But this is a new development. The prime ministership has become the plaything of a handful of power brokers whose names are almost completely unknown to the Australian people.

Today's Nielsen poll puts Labor in a commanding position. The challenge has been validated with the only vindication that the machine men care about. Sussex Street has arrived in Canberra.

Yes folks, it's the full blown delusional Sydney-centric "we're the centre of the known universe" mentality at work, and yet another chance for all those living outside Rome to marvel at the ways of those perfidious eastern staters. You see, Sussex street isn't just a street in Sydney, it's a state of mind, and it embraces the whole of Australia ...

Meanwhile, if you have a moment or two, you can track how Hartcher changed his crooning. Remember that mystery phrase about popular mandate?

Well, here is Hartcher back in early June in Rudd's showdown at the Last Chance Saloon:

The voters have issued their death threat. Rudd has just months in which to persuade the electorate to give him another chance.

Silly goose. We know now being in the eye of the storm what he meant to say was that Chairman Rudd had just weeks, perhaps only days in which to persuade his colleagues to give him another chance.

Ah well, it's sunny but chilly in Sydney, the world has been shaken, not stirred, and no doubt former chairman Rudd will still be seeking counsel on what underpants to wear.

But perhaps Hartcher should brood a second or two about donning wax wings and getting too near the sun king when it comes to writing decent, thoughtful, and insightful columns about politics, ones where the seams are hidden, and the incoherence and contradictions don't show up like flecks of dandruff on a black suit worn to a political funeral ...

(Below: he shoots, he scores. Must be Dutch? No amazingly it's from the New Zealand Railways Magazine, volume 5, issue 2, June 2, 1930, entitled "Through the scullery window" and found here. Don't ask me how I got there, just celebrate the wonders of the full to overflowing intertubes).

And now a special song for Peter Hartcher, so he can sing along with the impeccable Rex Harrison, the link for which will last as long as YouTube allows: