Rudd vs the US
FIRST there was the cool personal reception — now Kevin Rudd has been left out of the official White House photograph album.
Well Kevin, call a bloke an idiot and that’s what you get
The treatment received by Australia is very different to that received by former PM John Howard, whom Mr Bush dubbed his “man of steel”. But Mr Rudd denied any diplomatic hitches. “Those other matters were not canvassed by anybody,” he said while in the US.Of course the matters were not canvassed by anybody – the G20 leaders, Bush included, have better manners. Rudd can not possibly believe that his comments went unnoticed and he now has to deal with the fact that world leaders will now be viewing him with a jaundiced eye. The ALP are trying to spin the “What’s G20” item as something-nothing and have actually had some success in turning the debate back to the Libs. Both Malcom Turnbull and Julie Bishop are being pressured by the Australian and Laurie Oaks over Howard saying al-Qa’ida would prefer Obama to win. Two points here. The first is al-Qa’da is on record as saying they would prefer Obama to win, and secondly, the fact that Howard said this has absolutely no bearing on what Rudd said. Howard’s comments were about a hitherto nondescript US Senator whose status at the time was Presidential Nominee. Rudd’s statement was about the current US President, our major ally and was clearly defamatory. Rudd further exacerbated the diplomatic gaffe by ignoring it long enough for the impression to be created that Rudd was erudite and clearly more intelligent and worldly than the US President who didn’t even know who G20 were. As Rudd simply ignores questions in the house on the matter his ignorance will fade as the media follow the next big story; President Bush will retire and go back to Texas and Rudd will dine out for years on how he got away with calling the President of the US an idiot. Not here though; the incident will go into the overflowing basket of Rudd stuff-ups and enough will remember for it to matter later.