Minister for Damage Control busy

Kevin Rudd: White House ‘would welcome’ PM Latham. Well he would say that, wouldn’t he? Poor Kevin Rudd is kept very busy in his Damage Control portfolio trying to keep one step ahead of Latham’s utterings. Clearly if we have a Latham government and a Bush administration the US Australian relationship will not disintegrate-after all it survived Whitlam. But it’s not going to be very friendly. Politics will force Bush to ignore Latham’s outbursts but behind closed doors, in the oval office, Latham will simply be treated as an embarrassing relative. Everyone will simply wait politely while he says his piece and then get on with the real issues the moment he leaves.

“I haven’t picked up anything in Washington which would suggest that Mark Latham would not be welcomed to the White House as any other previous Australian prime minister,” he said.

Then you didn’t ask the right people.

Wendy Sherman, a foreign policy adviser to Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry, told Insiders the White House had been heavy-handed in its criticism of Mr Latham. “I don’t think we would be very happy if prime ministers from other countries got in the middle of our internal politics, our domestic politics,” she said.

Then you should be prepare to be very unhappy. If Latham gets the nod it will happen. We know it’s what he believes and he can’t keep a check on his tongue and a muzzle on the Left forever. If Armitage and Bush are playing politics then so is Wendy Sherman. The problem is, the Minister for Damage Control has had to visit the US and solicit support for an anti-US aspiring PM and quote the support, such as it is, to try and calm down an electorate that wonders how Latham is going to be strong enough to carry all his baggage into the Lodge.