Now that John Howard has finally gone, it is possible to start thinking about the future again. All through 2007, as it looked more and more likely that Kevin Rudd would lead Labor to victory, it was hard to think beyond election night. Could Howard perform a miracle after a year's worth of polls predicting his defeat? Would he lose in Bennelong to Maxine McKew? How would he concede defeat? Graciously? With a repeat of Fraser's 1983 tear? Or petulantly, as in his grim-faced presentation of the winners' medals to the English team at the 2003 Rugby World Cup?

We know the answers to all these questions now. Labor won easily. And Howard suffered the double defeat of losing government and his seat of Bennelong. Conceding that the Coalition had lost, Howard was gracious and statesmanlike. He didn't even look particularly rattled as he congratulated Mr Rudd and Labor, thanked Peter Costello, his staff, his family and the people of Australia, and took "full responsibility" for the campaign and for the defeat. It was a dignified performance. He would have known it was coming. A very tired Alexander Downer told the ABC's Insiders the next day that he had thought all year that the Coalition would lose the election, as the polls failed to respond to anything the government did.

The campaign was a dull affair, too long and too late after what was effectively a year-long campaign. By the time Howard called the election, it was over. No one was listening, except for the members of the press gallery, who still had to fill columns and columns of comment and speculation, and political junkies like me, who read whatever they write. The voters had already made up their minds. A Sunday Age poll published on 24 October, after the election was called, had Labor with an astonishing 18-point lead over the Coalition, and Coalition support from voters aged between 18 and 29 at just 27%. The polls soon settled back to the 8- to 10-point difference which Labor had held all year, and stubbornly refused to budge - not even for the Coalition's massive tax cuts, announced the next day; for its scare campaign about a union-dominated Labor front bench; or for its last bag of bribes at the belated campaign launch, at the start of the penultimate week. Two very late polls on the eve of the election told a better story for the government, but the result proved them wrong.

It is a testament to the hold power can exercise on the imaginations of those close to it that, until almost the very end, most of the media persisted in believing Howard still had a chance of defeating Labor. It was as if they were still bewitched by Howard, and refused to believe the evidence that the opinion polls had delivered, week after week for the whole year: that enough of the electorate was over Howard to vote him from office. The interest-rate rise announced after Melbourne Cup Day convinced them Howard couldn't win, though some commentators still held out the possibility of a miracle in the marginals. After the interest-rate rise, the Liberals, who had started their campaign confidently, with massive tax cuts and the slogan ‘Go for Growth', had not only to fend off questions about their 2004 election promise to deliver low interest rates, but to explain why the tax cuts were not inflationary and hence likely to lead to more interest-rate rises. Their message had become incoherent in their core area of strength, economic management.

After the interest-rate rise, the Coalition's campaign fell apart. The nadir was the final Thursday, when the prime minister's address to the National Press Club was overwhelmed by questions about the Lindsay leaflet. The husbands of the retiring member, Jackie Kelly, and the new candidate, Karen Chijoff, were caught red-handed distributing bogus pamphlets from a bogus Muslim group urging a vote for Labor. Amazingly, the two wives claimed to know nothing about the leaflet. The irony was unbelievable: Howard's final days in office were dominated by the dogs of racism and xenophobia he had whistled up in 2001 and which, on the eve of defeat, he was desperate to disown.