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An American Perspective on Howard's Defeat

At least one perspective on John Howard's electoral defeat comes from this piece "Good riddance to John Howard" on Salon.com:

"There's a tendency in the U.S. to view the elections in other countries based on the self-centered perspective that the result is always some sort of referendum on the U.S. Hence, all sorts of unwarranted conclusions are typically drawn whenever a pro-Bush foreign leader is defeated or re-elected.

Like most foreign elections, the humiliating defeat of Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, was driven largely by their own domestic concerns, and it had little (though not nothing) to do with the U.S. Still, it is worth celebrating Howard's defeat in light of how pernicious a presence he was, as one of the very few remaining world leaders who loyally supported the worst and most war-loving aspects of the Bush/Cheney foreign policy.

Back in February of this year, Howard inserted himself into U.S. domestic politics by spouting this Bill Kristol-like smear:

'If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for [Barack] Obama, but also for the Democrats.'

That comment was not only wildly inaccurate and repugnant in its own right, but it was also unbelievably hypocritical, given that Howard's close political aide, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, tried to intervene in support of Bush's 2004 re-election effort by criticizing John Kerry's claim that unnamed foreign leaders had expressed support for Kerry's campaign, telling The Washington Times: "I think it's probably better to keep foreign leaders and the views of foreign leaders out of domestic elections, I mean, certainly we do that here in this country."

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