Beazley, Crean & the politics of scared rabbits

Kim Beazley's passive leadership from 1996-2002

Rod Cameron’s pinpoint polling, that gave Labor a series of otherwise improbable victories in the 1980s and 1990s, has in the 2000s turned Labor into a party of scared rabbits.Kim Beazley’s small target strategy from 1996-2002 epitomised the way in which the spirit of a once great party is now condensed into a four week electoral scramble based on opinion surveys of hot issues in marginal seats. Polling is now part of politics, but adept leaders like Bill Clinton used polling not to tell him what policies he should have, but how to communicate the policies that he was committed to.

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