Sheridan: "Howard won - so there!!" *Pokes tongue out

Greg Sheridan is getting his knickers in a twist over the results of the Lowy poll concerning attitudes towards the US/UN etc. According to Sheridan…

The foreign policy class believes, almost unanimously, in a set of propositions that are not overwhelmingly shared by the public and are contested by the Howard Government.

Sheridan is deeply skeptical about the poll results which suggest that Australians favour multilateralism, support the UN, hold concerns over the current modus operandi of the Bush administration, and so on, and he points to loaded poll questions as an explanation. To be honest, I think the questions are a little loaded myself, but I think a poll on the same issues with ‘balanced’ questions would yield similar results. Indeed, many polls in the past have indicated wide public concern over the Bush administrations approach to the war on terror, and a desire to be more independent of the US when it comes to making decisions about how Australia should conduct itself internationally.

What irritates me, however, is comments such as this…

Yet isn't it remarkable that the same public re-elected the Howard Government with an increased majority, and that all through the election gave the Howard government a two-to-one majority over Labor on the question of who would better handle national security?

…as if to suggest the last election was a referendum on Howard’s approach to foreign affairs, with Howard’s victory a sign of public approval. People couldn’t have possibly voted for the Howard government after it launched an extensive scare campaign on interest rates, or perhaps because they saw Labor for what it is – a slightly watered down version of the Liberals.

What would Sheridan have to say if the election fell a few weeks prior to its actual date, at a point where the Labor party held a strong lead? Would he accept the assertion that “the Iraq war was wrong after all” on such an election result? The “Howard won the election so shut up” line has been employed a fair bit in response to continued criticism of the Iraq war – it’s just too bad for people like Sheridan this approach to discussion of these issues has zero argumentative value.