ROOTING FOR OZ

Forgive my prejudice, but I have a special fondness for the Land of Oz – that continent down under populated by the cheeriest, heartiest people on the planet who insist on calling their country Oz-trial-yuh.

Here in the US, even though we’re freaking out over our elections a little over three weeks from now, we should take a moment to root for our Ozzie friends who themselves are having an election as I am writing this.

With the possible exception of Tony Blair, America and George Bush have no better friend than Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The venomous hatred the left wing Labor Party has for Howard exceeds, believe it or not, that of Michael Moore Democrats for Bush. Yet Howard has remained totally steadfast in his support for America’s War on Islamofascism, making Australia a firm member of the coalition forces in Iraq.

For this support and friendship, Laborites are desperate to see Howard punished. They ridicule Howard as “Bush’s lap dog,” and openly campaign that a vote for Labor is a vote to “stick it” to the US. The Labor Party is the handmaiden of the labor unions, which are far more outright socialist than ours.

Labor’s candidate is Mark Latham, the protégé of the most disastrous PM in Australian history, Gough Whitlam. In his three years in power (73-75), he damaged the economy so scandalously – record inflation, unemployment, and deficit spending which he tried to finance with $4 billion in secret and illegal loans from Arab governments (the “Loans Affair”) – that the Queen’s Governor-General for Australia kicked him out of office (that can happen in the British Commonwealth).

You wouldn’t think that Ozzies would want a repeat performance – especially since the Howard Government has delivered historically low unemployment and inflation, and correspondingly high economic growth. You wouldn’t think that Ozzies would agree with Latham that the State is best able to make decisions about how individuals should run their lives, rather than as Howard believes, themselves. And yet Howard is fighting for his political life.

The parallels between Australia’s electoral choices on October 9 and America’s on November 2 are eerie and obvious. World leaders who are competent and courageous are in short supply these days. Let’s hope the Ozzies have the competence and courage to re-elect one of the best leaders Australia has ever had.