THE MONTHLY ESSAYS

“Great politicians are rare and Obama would be worth studying even if he were not the first black president of the US; in some minds he is the first of a post-racial US. How are these people formed? Why are they attracted to power at an age when most of us recoil from it? Is it the contest that they can’t resist or their own reflections? Whence their power of persuasion? The fine measurements of character and interest? The adroit judgement of consequences, and consequences upon consequences? How do they live with so much betrayal?”

In “From the Chrysalis”, Don Watson reviews David Remnick’s The Bridge, which explores Barack Obama’s path to the White House. Forging an identity for himself that may have the power to bridge the racial divide in American society, Obama is now in a unique position to effect long-lasting social change. As liberal Americans – and much of the rest of the world – watch Obama to see if he will live up to the promise of his political rhetoric, Watson ponders his chances of success.

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“What I hope for are [museum] exhibits that are enlivening, that deepen my understanding of both past and present, and enlarge my sense of what it means to be an Australian. Mostly, however, I come away with the impression that our curators are more concerned about the preservation of the artefact than they are to give any account of the history that produced it. Where is the passion for meaning, for making sense of the world? Where is the desire to create an experience for the visitor?”

In “The Absent Heart”, Amanda Lohrey delivers a vibrant criticism of museums in Australia. After visiting some of Australia’s best-known museums – the Melbourne Museum, the National Museum of Australia, the Australian War Memorial – Lohrey is left wanting, concerned that the “perfunctory exposition” of Australia’s historical icons points to unthinking curatorial decisions and a lack of imagination, which impedes a fullness of experience for museum visitors.

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“While the cultural practices and economic reasons vary from region to region, the underlying belief – that the male child is of superior worth to the female child – remains the same. Girls are aborted, killed or neglected to death for no other reason than that they are girls.”

And in “Gendercide”, Anne Manne discusses an appalling and long-shrouded humanitarian crisis: the intentional and prolific murder of baby girls. Manne’s article is a deft combination of the objective and the personal, presenting thorough research into the shocking practice of femicide, as well as relaying the grim personal anecdotes of those who have borne witness to the practice. Ultimately, the “global war against baby girls” takes hold as an ethical crisis that can no longer be ignored.

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“‘Brian [Burke] has never paid anyone to do anything,’ says one of his mates, the knockabout horse trainer and ex-talkback host Bob Maumill. ‘He doesn’t need to. He knows who to ring and what to say when he rings.’ And ring people Burke certainly did. In 2006, he made around 13,000 phone calls (more than 40 per day), which were secretly recorded and analysed by a team of 40 people at the CCC. These calls revealed Burke to be an extraordinarily effective lobbyist, who knew exactly how to find the pressure points in government and how to use his armoury of political skills … to get decisions made in his clients’ favour.”

In “Life of Brian”, Paul Barry investigates the latest saga of Brian Burke: his recent court trial for corruption. Barry looks back over Burke’s career, from his beginnings as a TV journalist to his rise to prominence in Western Australia as premier, and then to his post-political life as a lobbyist. In trying to better understand what makes him tick, Barry ponders whether Burke will yet rise again and become a source of political influence.

THE NATION REVIEWED

“Rudd’s commitment to action on climate change was integral to his electoral victory. His government’s first deed was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and Rudd played an important role in the international climate negotiations. For all these reasons, the cost of a funk in climate policy is not mere short-term voter dissatisfaction, but a devastation of Rudd’s own moral authority.”

In the first Monthly Comment, Tim Flannery explores the implications of Kevin Rudd’s ETS backflip, questioning the prime minister’s integrity. With a resurgent Malcolm Turnbull and a momentum-gathering Greens party on Rudd’s heels, Flannery ponders whether Labor’s continuous and increasingly predictable procrastination in dealing with environmental issues will be their current leader’s undoing.

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“The scientific evidence is clear, as outlined by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists: on average the Murray–Darling Basin requires the return of some 4000 gigalitres of water to ensure system-wide environmental health. That is, 4000 billion litres need to be diverted from industry to the environment (or enough to fill around 1.6 million Olympic-sized swimming pools).”

In the second Monthly Comment, Mark Aarons examines current water policy and its impact on the ailing Murray–Darling Basin. He questions whether the Rudd government has the courage to do what is necessary to seize its singular opportunity to ensure the future health of our precious river systems – a process that would involve major structural re-adjustment.

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“Remember the rule: Failing markets destabilise democracy. So it happened that on 6 May 2010 the normal pattern – sequenced thumping victories for figures such as Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher – ­was decisively rejected by voters. Bridling their enthusiasm, they held their noses. In an eerie expression of collective wisdom, pencil in hand, standing alone in classrooms, churches and community centres, many millions of individual citizens cleverly voted against the whole political establishment.”

In the third Monthly Comment, John Keane analyses the outcome of the recent elections in the UK. In the context of no single party having received enough votes to claim outright victory, Keane considers the implications not only for each party in the immediate future, but also for democracy in the longer term.

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Plus, in “The Hard Stuff”, Malcolm Knox attempts to crack the secretive world of management consultancy; and, in “Links”, Catherine Ford wanders through the twilight world of a Melbourne golf course.

ARTS & LETTERS

“Pamela Travers always insisted that she had never actually created Mary Poppins: ‘Mary just arrived,’ she would say. This was in keeping with her mystical view of the world, but perhaps she was right. Mary is always just arriving from somewhere over the horizon of our consciousness, born aloft on a breeze of mystery and magic.”

In “Something about Mary”, Alan Saunders delves into the world of the Australian author PL Travers and her most famous and beloved character, Mary Poppins. In the lead-up to the opening of the Mary Poppins musical next month in Melbourne, Saunders sheds light on Travers’ life and explains how her interest in the haunted and mythical, which permeates the Mary Poppins books, has been lost – much to the author’s disappointment – in the subsequent re-imaginings of the character.

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“What makes Long Day’s Journey Into Night so wrenching is that it’s about all our lives. Its autobiographical references are exact – [Eugene] O’Neill’s father was a penny-pinching ham actor like James Tyrone and his mother became addicted to morphine after being dosed with it during childbirth ­– but they don’t turn the piece into a howl of self-pity. The Tyrones and their two surviving sons represent the human family, a potentially lethal incubator. An institution designed to regulate the transmission of property has actually proved better at passing on guilt.”

In “Writing from the Grave”, Peter Conrad reflects on Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, declaring it a play everyone should steel themselves for at least once. Conrad posits that, although watching the play is a harrowing experience, it explores, to great effect, the suffering that runs inevitably through the human experience.

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“While most anti-communist social democrats made their peace a long time ago with the political economy of neo-liberalism and American militarism, to his great credit Judt never has. He is the most important contemporary representative of a nearly extinct political tendency – the anti-communist, social-democratic Left. His manifesto is driven by his conviction that in rejecting social democracy 30 years ago the West stumbled badly, and by his hope that the social democratic tradition can now be revived.”

In “State of Tomorrow”, Robert Manne reviews the new work by the historian Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land, and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Judt’s account of the history and fall of social democracy.

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Plus, there’s Juliana Engberg on the 17^th Biennale of Sydney; and Robyn Davidson on Antony Gormley’s Firmament IV.