Writing in , The Austalian,
Janet Albrechsten sees the similarities between the campaign run by
Aussie PM Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama. She notes its in the packaging
of each as a post-partisan candidate, and that it is the candidates of
the left which use the term:

THE latest political gimmick is to claim there is no difference
between Left and Right any more. In his bid to become prime minister,
Kevin Rudd wrapped himself in the language of post-partisanship last
year.

Democrat Barack Obama is taking it to new levels in his bid to win
the US presidency. He is the post-partisan candidate, he says, the man
gliding above old-style politics in an age where ideology is apparently
a thing of the past. Notice how it’s only those on the Left who cloak
themselves in this talk of post-partisanship? In time, reality is
likely to prove this to be just another duplicitous political trick to
hide real political agendas.

Albrechten points out where Obama is going with all this and why:

So what’s left to fight about in 2008? In a word, plenty. For all of
his high-falutin’ talk about being Post-Partisan Man, Obama is
perpetrating a hoax on American voters. Anyone familiar with Obama’s
political history would realise that he is to the left of Teddy Kennedy
and Jimmy Carter. He is ranked as the most liberal senator by the
National Journal’s 27th annual analysis of congressional voting
patterns. No surprise given he has voted against tax cuts, opposed bans
on partial birth abortion, and has shown an anathema towards free trade
pacts.

America’s most left-wing senator is pitching himself as the
transforming, unifying figure who represents a new style of politics.
As keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he wooed
Democrats by announcing: “There’s not a liberal America and a
conservative America: there is the United States of America.” So began
a love affair with the senator for Illinois.

Albrechten knows that gameplan of the left in a presidential election and points out that Obama knows the script.:

Called the Potomac shuffle, presidential candidates traditionally
move centre to shore up the swing voters and try to take votes from
their opponents. But even by the standards of yore, Obama is, as one
American commentator said, “quite a mover on the dance floor.” Having
rejected old-style political manipulation, Obama is now mastering the
art.

Obama has shifted from his original position of talking with Iran’s
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with “no precondition”. He has moderated
his policy of withdrawing US soldiers from Iraq. And the hip young
Democrat has been lip-synching the words of conservatives on the US
Supreme Court by supporting the death penalty for child rapists and
backing the Second Amendment right of Americans to own handguns.

Obama is shrewd. He knows he has to play down Hollywood’s love
affair with him, the fact that Europe has gone ga-ga over him and those
soft-lens photos of him that keep appearing on the front cover of
Rolling Stone. So, he has recently courted the religious Right by
supporting President George W. Bush’s initiative to promote
“rfaith-based” social welfare programs.

How long will so many swoon? Will the television networks and the AP
be able to sustain both the message and the con for long enough for the
electorate?

No more Left and Right? Wrong. Just as Australian voters are now
discovering that post-partisan talk is crafty election rhetoric,
American voters may discover even greater duplicity in Obama’s
post-partisan bid for the White House. Underneath his powerful message
lies an old-fashioned tax and spend, big government liberal. The
question is whether that happens before or after they choose their next
president.

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