Crikey Blogs’ resident clever bastard Possum has come up with the characteristically brilliant idea of inviting readers to guess the result of the next Newspoll and record their prediction in the form in the sidebar. The next poll will be a particularly fascinating case study as it involves the unknown quantity of the Malcolm Turnbull leadership factor. The results of the survey will thus provide a fascinating measure of how much collective wisdom there is in this particular crowd. My guess is: not very much.
Prove me wrong, readers!
I don’t think arrogance is a good look really. Remember Carpenter? The media would have a field day with it.
I don’t mean arrogance as a practice to adopt or a sneering arrogance – but showing yourself to be totally authoritive and superior on the issue at hand and to demonstrate the inferiority of the other person’s position. Rudd on the last 7.30 Report was getting to that stage. Fluent, athoritive, no hesitation, none of those wish washy phrases. People always thought Howard arrogant but still voted for him because was translated as being truly superior and in control – until he took it too far.
All he has to keep saying if Turbull wants to crap on about bi-partisanship is “pass the budget”. Simple.
Rudd is arrogant, which means “unable or unwilling to conceal awareness of one’s own superiority.”
Turnbull is conceited, which means “labouring under a false belief in one’s own superiority.”
I know there’s a lot going on, but I would have thought that by now the continuing high petrol prices would be drawing some flak given oil has been trading at less than US$100/barrel for a while now. By my reckoning unleaded should be no more than $1-35 at the peak of the weekly cycle, and much less early in the week! Graeme Samuel must be asleep at the wheel……. again! 🙁
Arrogance is usually accepted if it has genuine demonstrable foundations. Conceitedness is grating.
Can’t see how Turnbull will do much good when he had all the trouble in the world with Swan and in the end Swan was taunting him. And it doesn’t get any easier. I feel sorry for whoever comes up against Gillard.
[I know there’s a lot going on, but I would have thought that by now the continuing high petrol prices would be drawing some flak given oil has been trading at less than US$100/barrel for a while now. By my reckoning unleaded should be no more than $1-35 at the peak of the weekly cycle, and much less early in the week! Graeme Samuel must be asleep at the wheel……. again!]
In that same period the Aussie dollar has dropped 20c against the Greenback. That is why our petrol prices haven’t moved.
I believe Turnbull has many talents. Unfortunately, the talent for being Prime Minister is not among them.
Turbull is arrogant.
Costello is conceited.
Rudd is a genius (from time to time).
[In that same period the Aussie dollar has dropped 20c against the Greenback. That is why our petrol prices haven’t moved.]
That would be the excuse, anyway.
Dario, I factored in the currency differential when I did the calculation, though our dollar has only dropped about 15 cents from when oil was $147. Its now less than $99, exactly a third cheaper.
Dario, our family still has heaps in US banks that we are waiting to move to Aussie banks until the exchange rate gets better [as vs what it was when we moved here in 2004]. For me, therefore, I will wear the fuel costs as I watch as the value of our American bank ledger keep on increasing even though there aren’t any real funds going into it 😉 …..
I note there’s been some discussion over Malcolm Turnbull’s offer of bi-partisanship to help manage the “economic crisis”.
Why is he doing it? Perhaps it’s because despite all the fanfare and excitement, boring old Wayne Swan out polled Malcolm Turnbull as preferred Treasurer and Rudd will easily out poll him as preferred PM. It’s Turnbull and the Coalition who need to boost their credibility, not Rudd, Swan or the ALP.
Galaxy 19 May 2008
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23719923-5001021,00.html
“Some 36 per cent of voters believe Mr Swan would be the better economic manager over Liberal shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull, who rated 25 per cent.
In the weekend before the Budget, the figures were essentially reversed in a Newspoll survey – 35 to Mr Turnbull and 29 per cent to Mr Swan.”
Newspoll 20 May 2008
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23726970-601,00.html
“During the budget period, Mr Swan has overtaken Mr Turnbull on the question of who would make the better Treasurer, to lead by 40 per cent over Mr Turnbull’s 26 per cent.
Before the election, Peter Costello had an advantage over Mr Swan of more than two-to-one.
The Coalition has also lost its mantle as preferred economic manager to the Labor Government, with 52 per cent saying the Coalition could not deliver a better budget, to 29 per cent who said it could.”
Once again, we see the Canberra Press gallery with little or no idea about what is going on outside the bubble in which they live, by proclaiming this week that the ALP is very nervous about Turnbull’s ascension to the throne. Just because they wish something to be a particular way, doesn’t mean it is, or ever will be.
Most recent PMs have been arrogant men: Menzies, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating certainly were. Curiously, Howard is not especially arrogant. His dominant characteristic is obstinacy. Russ is no more arrogant than most of his predecessors. And as Tom Paine says, the voters don’t mind arrogance up to a point. They do react against arrogance when it becomes open contempt – as with Jeff Kennett. They dislike pomposity, which is Turnbull’s achilles heel.
Russ = Rudd
No 358
LOL, come off it.
Rudd is a bastion of supreme arrogance.
BB @ 358 If you seriously opine that Australia’s twenty sixth prime minister is a ‘genius (from time to time)’, you must concede that is said with a sense of foreboding.
Bushfire Bill @ 358,
“Costello is conceited.”
In Parliament QT on Thursday, Costello happened to be there (for a change). [This was my 3rd trip to QT since Parliament returned at the end of August and only the first time I’ve seen him. I gather, therefore, that he is a no-show more often than not. I can’t remember who it was (think it was Tanner though); but someone referenced Costello in their reply to a question and the whole room, gallery and members, turned to look at him. He waved his hands back and forth for about 5 to 10 seconds as if he was bowing in his seat from the adulation ……… it was the most annoying thing to actually see it. Wouldn’t have been broadcast over the airwaves as they only show the person speaking for the most part.
New thread.