Tampa-ring with conservatism

So long as he wasn't doing anything Nixonesque like having all his conversations secretly taped, Howard might be confident no-one will contradict his claim of ignorance. Certainly none of the political advisers, kept on the payroll when the backwash from this affair should have seen their careers washed up, have much incentive to publicly disagree.

But the boat of Howard the substantial conservative has been holed below the water line, and by his own hand. There is something wrong in this picture of an ostensibly conservative Prime Minister taking succour in admissions that some of the most significant institutions of the state are rotten; that the bureaucracy cannot be relied upon to provide frank and fearless advice, and that the heads of the public service and the defence forces are incapable of distinguishing fiction from fact unless they get authorised confirmation from the correct channels and a PowerPoint presentation.

The government's spin on the events of the last election campaign was a novel translation of politics as the art of the possible; but it was a most vulgar rendering that missed the conservative's mark. For conservatism, the possible is not whatever you can get away with but defined by the potentialities and limitations of human nature, defending order, justice and freedom.

There used to be, or so it seemed, more of such an overt conservative ethic in Australia, a general consensus of belief based on principles compounded in the crucible of Cold War politics. Facing off against Marxist materialism, in whose moral realm the ends justified the means, those of the conservative ilk defended the institutions of a free society of freedom of political and economic association, the spirit of individual enterprise and the extension of the democratic impulse through representative, accountable government. But more than anything else, they defended a way of going about things, an approach that emphasised caution, the primacy of first principles, a deference to the lessons of the past and a sense always that civilisation is furthered by taking a long-term view and adhering to fundamental moral laws.

It is said that all civilisations die from within, corrupted by their own success; they grow rotten at the core long before they are susceptible to external attack. This may also be true of conservatism as a political force in Australia. While politicians who fly the conservative banner maintain the white-picket fence, their house is being white-anted.