Street Style

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the ascendance to power of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

To help celebrate this milestone it’s instructive to put Kruddy’s story into the context of his past – as a prime dork. The type of guy at school who would sit under shadecloth at lunchtime rolling 25 sided dice in between bites of his mum’s special salad sandwiches, maximising his charisma points in preparation for an assault on his nerd sorcerer friend’s castle of special loser power. Yeah yeah, it’s hardly original to characterise him as a D&D dude, but you know it’s true. The meek inherited the country.

The smartest thing Kruddy did though, was to remember those lunchtimes with the skinned knees and the reddening of the white skin on the back of his neck in preparation for an assault on the Usurper of Canberra, John Howard, during the 2007 election. At first it seemed reckless to make such a challenge, but the years Kruddy spent optimising his cloak of invulnerability reaped dividends in the face of old fuckface Howard’s dwindling reign of evil. Unfazed by the ancient master’s use of the double-sided wedge card, he slipped a mortality serum into Howard’s non-alcoholic ale and nullified his +10 election hit points to take power in a bloodless overthrow. Dorks rejoice.

But for serious, how has Rudd done in office? There have been a few ups and a couple of stuff-ups, but nothing amazing. Ticks for saying sorry to the indigenous folk (who had their traditional kingdoms stolen by prior generations of English fantasy lovers) and for ratifying the Kyoto protocol. But how hard would it have been to achieve those two feats? It’s ok I guess but a few more magic tricks might be required before our attention gets diverted.

Ok, he also did some pretty sweet globetrotting on his white stallion. He pulled Australian troops out of Iraq earlier in the year but they weren’t doing much anyway and nobody really noticed. Then when the economic crisis hit he accidentally made himself look pretty good by making up details of a private phone call where Dubya supposedly didn’t know what the G20 was. But did you know?

Domestically he’s made some announcements about strengthening public and tertiary education and helping homeless people a bit, but what you didn’t notice at the time with the flapping of his cape and releasing of some white smoke was that nothing’s actually happened in those areas. We’ve been had! The medieval charlatan has skipped out of town! Same with the Garnaut report into climate change. Nice work to get it all done and get some serious economic stats behind something that most people know is pretty logical, but what are you actually gonna do about it Kruddy? Oh. A bit of tinkering at the margins. Say some stuff and then don’t do much to back it up. I see what’s going on here.

All up he gets 5/10. In the true fantasy story tradition, Krudd’s rise to power was impressive and slightly supernatural. But after getting so wrapped up in the magic it was inevitable that the reality was just a bit … vanilla. Sometimes what you see is all you’re gonna get.

Photo by mao_lini