Peter Hartcher - "Bipolar Nation: How to Win the 2007 Election" (Quarterly Essay issue 25)

Didn't initially strike me as one of the most obviously incisive QEs that I've read, but on further reflection I think that the quality of analysis in Hartcher's piece is actually quite high, and that I may've been misled by the seeming familiarity of what he has to say - though the broad outlines of his argument aren't new, the particular way he wraps them together adds something. Takes the ideas of Australia as the "lucky country" and "frightened country" as orienting themes and looks at the strategies employed by Howard and Rudd to date, particularly in relation to national security and the economy. People have been talking a lot about this next federal election - more than I remember them doing about the last one - and me, well, I've been thinking that an awful lot may ride on who gets in, even more so than usual.