Peter Hartcher concluded his 5 parts series on the Abbot Government today. Just as Sarah Ferguson's documentary about the Rudd-Gillard ALP government was painful in retelling every turn of that story, the narrative never giving us respite from the misery, Hartcher's account sinks us into pondering some fairly basic human problems. Namely, just what kind of people are we sending to Canberra to represent us? Try this section for size:
Turnbull commonly told colleagues that Abbott's capacity for self-delusion, his lack of comprehension for the feelings of those around him, showed that he was "basically a psychopath".
Turnbull had been described by an earlier Liberal leader, Brendan Nelson, as suffering "narcissistic personality disorder". Now it seemed the narcissist was calling the psychopath crazyIt makes you wonder just what kind of people our democracy selects to rule us. Accepting Brendan Nelson's diagnosis of NPD for Malcolm Turnbull requires a grain of salt. It's the kind of diagnosis he might have read about, but it's hard to imagine his clinical experience dealing with and diagnosing people with this condition. Similarly, Malcolm Turnbull's diagnosis of Tony Abbott as a psychopath is equally - if not even more so - suspect. If we are to believe such diagnoses, then combined with the account at one point that had Kevin Rudd was a psychopath as well, 4 out of the last 5 Prime Minsters would have to have been pathological.
Again, if we are to believe such armchair diagnoses, that is.
Still, one does wonder about the mental health of some of these people. The hardened heads and hearts of the likes of Bronwyn Bishop, Eric Abetz, and Kevin Andrews ; the utterly outlandish Cory Bernardi; the moral permeability of Philip Ruddock; and the cloud-cuckoo climate change denialism of Barnaby Joyce; all of these people make you wonder about their mental health. They look clinical. Yet there they are, sitting in government. None of it looks too far from the British version of the 'House of Cards' on the crazy stakes. It's understandable then that even though Julia Gillard cut a whole bunch of areas, she boosted mental health expenditure. She probably had a look around her and thought it best.
As you can see, it's easy to bandy about easy labels and pretend the other person is wilfully wrong-headed because they're somehow clinically crazy. The truth is, it's a lot more complicated than that, and you can have seamless high-functioning psychopaths and socially inept non-psychopaths alike, though it has to be said the political options for the latter are severely limited. If Tony Abbott was indeed a high-functioning psychopath - like a Gordon Gecko type, - it appears that we're not talking about a terribly high ceiling for the "high"part of high-functioning. After all his tack record is what it is: not very good with a side order of shit. If indeed Malcolm Turnbull is NPD, it appears his government is starkly lacking in the kind of drama queen moments that usually surround NPD people. As tempting as it is, it would be quite the overreach to be branding these people with these diagnoses.
Still, Occam's Razor says the easier explanation for these people and their behaviour would be that they're completely bonkers.
Looking For A Comeback? That's Insanity
Tones is still in parliament. Which in some minds means he's still around if anybody needs him to have another shot.
Abbott's now celebrated attendance at one of Peter Dutton's "Monkey Pod" lunches, replete with a cake baked by "Peta", suddenly makes sense in this light. It suggests the ex-PM's confidant remains utterly pivotal to his future in politics.
It's Peta who is "keeping Tony in the game", says a sympathetic MP. "She believes he can make a come-back probably more than him and is pushing him to it."How crazy is that? How insane would that be? Consider this for a moment: Kevin Rudd was able to contemplate a comeback exactly because he was one of the most popular Prime Ministers of all time. He could appeal to the electorate. Malcolm Turnbull was able to consider staying on and eventually coming back against Tony Abbott because he was enormously popular - exactly in the way Tony Abbott was not. Tony Abbott's unpopularity was of such historic magnitude, the nation was quite glad to be rid of him. The nation is still asking itself how it got itself into such a compromising situation the way married men who attend bucks nights ask themselves afterwards. It was equal parts tawdry, seedy and sad.
You could argue that after their demises, the nation and its electorate missed both Rudd AND Turnbull, so much so it fuelled their comebacks. The only people to miss Gillard are a certain brand of Leftists that need lots of badges to describe: unionist, Catholic, female. The people who saw industrial laws as more important than the ETS, the people who while voting for the ALP didn't want marriage equality and professional academic feminists. Similarly, the only people who miss Tony Abbott are a certain brand of the right that also need lots of badges to describe: anti-unionist, Protestant, white-male-entitled. The people who see the destruction of the working class bargaining power as being more important than actual economic policy, the people who hate gays and don't want them to be normalised into mainstream society, and a certain kind of entitled white male reactionary that thinks they're a persecuted minority.
The roughly two years of Tony Abbott's time as Prime Minister was an anomaly where a candidate for the hard right was able to wrest control of enough points of leverage to thrust himself into the middle of politics. He was nobody's idea of an ideal candidate except for the small minority on the hard right that wants to live in a world of Victorian era prejudices. There were simply too many compromises to put him in the middle in the first place, and so it unravelled with each and every stupid decision, each and every stupid gesture, each and every stupid move.
If Peta Credlin thinks the Abbott souffle is going to rise once more, she's got rocks in her head. Then again, she sounds like a mental health case too.
My Pet Theory About Tony Abbot's Mental Health
I know I've said this before but it's brain damage from his Oxford Blue boxing days.
He didn't guard, he flailed. And got hit a lot. He looks pretty concussed to me, as in he looks like somebody who took a lot of punches to the head.
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