John Winston Howard the 25th Prime Minister of
Australia will not go down in the history books
as the second-longest serving Australian Prime
Minister (much to his regret), but as the
second sitting PM (after Stanley Bruce) to lose
his own seat in a re-election.

There will be time enough to judge our current
Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and those that come
after him, in the years ahead.

It should be an interesting comparison for the students
of history and political science. One PM's blunders
are well documented, the other still has time to make
his.

Foxy, knowing our historical recollection of past Prime Ministers- and our contemporary confusion over what they actually did/do/didn't: Howard will probably go down in the books as something quite unlike how most remembered his reign (either something dazzling like his (extremely mild) economic boosts, or his utter wickedness and warmongering.

A good example (and ironically actually to his credit) is how he is differentiated from past Liberal Party leaders as non-Liberal and highly conservative and warmongering- despite being comparitively mild compared to "small L" Fraser and Menzies- who both supported conscripting Australian civilians to fight in Vietnam (the first time conscription had ever been introduced- and without public consent which I'm pretty sure is unconstitutional), simply because they were communist and needed to be stopped using whoever they could throw at them.

The one book that decided to describe Menzies as a 'tyrant' (which sounds pretty good to me), were hounded. As bad as Howard was, he probably WAS the most liberal Liberal leader- at least drafting wasn't on his agenda.

John Howard will always be the Lying Rodent to me.

CJ writes

'John Howard will always be the Lying Rodent to me'

Coming from a Greens supporter why would anyone be surprised. Truth and lying is a moving target for them.

Dear old runner - you just make stuff up, don't you?

I don't suppose you'd like to provide a reference to a single lie uttered by an Australian Greens politician? With Howard it's dead easy - we could start with the "never ever" GST and go from there.

Besides which, "Lying Rodent" was a title bestowed on him by his own party. It fits so well.