alan ramsey 

Most of us thought the country, tired of Howard's miserable mob, had elected Rudd's new mob to "get on with it" and govern with a bit of decency and policy difference. What we didn't understand was the new bloke's quaint idea of just what that means. 

Rudd has not only junked Labor tradition and hand-picked his own 42-member executive, he's also pinched the title of a 36-year-old account of the origins of the US's greatest military disaster to clothe an extraordinary mix of "1000" citizens conscripted to come up with "70 big ideas" between 8.45 this morning and 1.30 tomorrow afternoon to give Krudd and Co some "long-term" depth to the necessary business of short-term governance. 

I won't tell you my opinion of all this expensive wankery. If they come up with one good, fresh idea, then I'll apologise. In the meantime, know that when David Halberstam wrote the original The Best And The Brightest, "his thesis was that those who crafted the US war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America, yet those same men were unable to imagine and promote anything but a bloody and disastrous course". 

Know, too, that when Halberstam arrived in Saigon in September 1962, a colleague would write 27 years later, "He was young, ambitious, energetic, smart, self-certain to the edge of cockiness, and he knew from the moment he landed that his timing was perfect. Nothing like this would happen to him again, and he decided to go for it all." 

Remind you of anyone? 

Krudd & Co Know An Idea When They See It 

and from mike carlton ….. 

All this month I have been hanging over the front gate, waiting for the postman to arrive with my invitation to this weekend's Great 2020 Talkfest in Canberra. 

It hasn't come. How humiliating. They even invited Miranda Devine, for heaven's sake. I think she is to be locked in a room with David Marr and Gerard Henderson and perhaps Phillip Adams, deciding how we should govern ourselves. Poor David. We shall see who gets out alive. 

Not that I wanted to go. It's just that I would have liked the opportunity to turn it down, politely of course, but making a point. I am old-fashioned enough to think that journalists should be on the outside of the tent looking in, not inside joining in. Our job is to kick shins, not rub shoulders.  

Everyone has become too bloody respectable these days although, sadly, I noticed from the picture in the paper the other day that both Henderson and the Prime Minister wear pre-tied bow ties with their dinner jackets. It has come to this. 

Lest We Forget Other Battles, Let's Not Go Over The Top On Gallipoli