In the grand scheme of things, Kevin Rudd is to Barack Obama what Oasis is to the Beatles, but in relative terms, they face a similar predicament. They carry the weight of great expectation into an uncertain world.
Obama, at least, could be thankful he was not elected president of Australia or that burden would be even greater.
Four polls released in the lead-up to the US election showed he was vastly more popular here than in the US - between 72 per cent and 75 per cent of Australian voters would have chosen him if they could. In the actual election, he won just over 52 per cent of the popular vote.
Even so, John Utting, the market researcher behind much of Labor's success, including Kevin Rudd's election victory, believes Obama will not be able to meet the weight of expectation upon him.
He bases this assumption on field work carried out 10 days before the US election in which Utting's organisation, UMR Research, interviewed 1000 Australian people, of which 724, or 72.4 per cent, wanted Obama to win.
Although support for Obama was higher than in the US, the sentiments expressed by those willing Obama to victory were the same as they were in the US and, indeed, Europe and elsewhere.
The qualitative analysis asked Obama backers: "What do you think would be different under Barack Obama?" The answers fell into eight broad categories: young and fresh; positive global impact; better leadership for America; historic moment for race relations; will deliver much-needed change in America; better approach to domestic and international affairs; less focus on war; and better economic management.
Within each category, there were four or five leading sentiments expressed.
For example, Obama, people felt, would reduce America's deficit, regulate its economy, restore its reputation for international law and human rights, not be held captive to big oil companies, reduce carbon emissions, pull troops out of Iraq and stop the war on terrorism, and so on.
"I think Bush has been a war profiteer and has fanned hatred. He has mismanaged the economy and let bankers and traders steal trillions of our money," was one distilled response.
Messes, such as the many Bush has bequeathed, are far easier to create than clean up, and Obama has the added disadvantage of inheriting a nation and a world diving into recession.
Utting doesn't think Obama has much hope of living up to what is a messianic reputation.
"People have taken all the negatives of the Bush years and heaped them upon him," he said. "They have flipped them around, turned them into hopes and projected them onto Obama."
Rudd is often prone to quip about it being a hell of time to be elected, given the economic and environmental challenges the world faces.
His lot is easier than Obama's; he inherited an economy far from being a basket case. Also, Rudd carries the hopes of a nation, not the world. Moreover, he replaced an administration which was not hated, nor even very unpopular, just tired, out of ideas and spent of political capital.
Nonetheless, he campaigned on a platform of change, reform and of fixing such things as climate change. In a fortnight, Rudd will mark his first year in power. It seems much longer.
Apart from grappling with the volatile economic situation, the year was spent establishing reviews and putting other events in train which would - next year and the election year after - make his Government appear a very busy and reformist administration as it spent and changed things in accordance with the recommendations flooding its way.
The now skin-tight budget has changed all that. Apart from what was promised before the election, there will be little else between now and the 2010 poll. Today there will be an announcement of about $2.5 billion in car industry assistance in the next decade. Later this month, there'll be another $600 million or so for small infrastructure projects, and next year, pensioners, who have already had lavished on them almost $9 billion extra this year alone, will receive the lion's share of the remaining budget surplus. Paid maternity leave and a host of other post-election thought bubbles are off the agenda, for next year's budget at least.
It has not gone unnoticed inside the Government that the Rudd agenda was always going to be difficult to achieve, and that meant upsetting sections of the electorate.The election promises alone - an emissions trading scheme, education revolution and a broadband network among them - were going to be tough enough without heaping more on the plate as the term progressed.
Suddenly a dearth of funds may not seem a bad thing, even if it does mean lowered expectations.
Source: smh.com.au
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