John Howard v Meghan Markle: let’s put true authenticity into focus
Putting these two in the same sentence is so wrong it should be a thought crime, but stick with me here.
It is surely regarded as reactionary to say good things about an old white man instead of going gaga about a young black woman living her authentic self. But stay with me while I compare John Howard with Meghan Markle, after listening to both of them on separate podcasts this week.
A generation apart, and a world away, they symbolise where we are now, and what we used to be. Putting Howard and Markle in the same sentence is so wrong it should be a thought crime, until you think about how many of Markle’s most irritating traits are commonplace in so many of our politicians.
Everything that is frightfully shallow about modernity is wrapped up in the form of the Duchess of Nothing Much. Like a kid’s game of pass-the-parcel, you unwrap layers of self-absorption, virtue-signalling chitchat about how she feels, graceless whimpering and whining, dramas and finding offence, courting the media then blubbering when coverage doesn’t go her way, only to find nothing of note inside.
Markle is the repository of all the baloney that infects large swathes of society, from our biggest companies to our schools and universities, bureaucracy and our politics – so many choosing vocal wokery over quiet excellence.
Howard is a reminder of so much that, if we haven’t lost our collective marbles yet, deserves not just our admiration but what needs channelling too. Start with Howard’s humility. Can you imagine Howard playing the Messiah, secretly centralising power like Scott Morrison, distrusting his colleagues and voters alike. We shouldn’t need to legislate for good judgment, and yet that is where we are.
Howard’s temperament, his unfailing civility, his focus on ideas, policy, his convictions, are rarities too.
I still have no clue what Morrison believes in apart from his Pentecostal faith.
Howard’s latest book, A Sense of Balance, published earlier this month, does more than explore a set of important and enduring ideas and policies where balance is key to securing the right outcome. The title sums up the man.
The duchess’s next book will surely be called A Series of Conversations with Me, Myself and I. That’s the theme of her new podcast series Archetypes in any case. The first in the series is stream-of-consciousness dribble where Markle teases listeners with the delicious prospect of hearing “the real me”. One hour feels like four, and you end up berating yourself for listening to an empty-headed, dreamy, whiny, yakety-yak drama queen, rather than doing something more useful, like scratching out your eyes.
“I’m just excited to be myself,” the duchess says before she spends the next hour allegedly talking to her “dear friend” Serena Williams only to talk about herself, revealing that the “real” Meghan is no different to the fake one she has played for the cameras as royal celebrity in exile.
The duchess, who has no discernible job except promoting herself as doing some terribly important job, has become useful as a symbol of the self-absorption of many in the political class.
Whereas Howard is the antidote we need to keep the faith, not just in politics, but in people. In his hour-long interview with Sarah Grynberg on her podcast, A Life of Greatness, here is authenticity, the old variety of authenticity before Markle became the marker for the insufferable dross it is today.
Howard doesn’t talk about being authentic. He didn’t ever tell voters here is the “real” John Howard – as Julia Gillard did – when politics went a bit wobbly, and there were plenty of those times during his 11 years in office. He was just John Howard, comfortable in his own skin, no airs or graces, not pretending to be some kind of daggy dad in front of cameras to get closer to blue collar voters, not washing some woman’s hair at a basin in a local hairdressing salon, cameras in tow, a la Morrison.
At press conferences, there was no mention of “Janette said this” or “Janette and I think this”, as Malcolm Turnbull did so often, as if trying to prove to Australian women that not only was he the most brilliantly clever prime minister in the history of the entire world, but he was also one of those husbands who listens to his wife.
Wide-eyed and woolly-headed, we’ve gone off the rails in so many areas, including when it comes to the authenticity racket. Markle is the pin-up girl for a generation where you announce on Instagram or TikTok or in a podcast that you’re living your authentic life. Being authentic is now, apparently, as easy as claiming it to be true, because your truth is all that matters.
That’s why Howard is so damn refreshing. He is a role model of understatement, humility, and the real deal on authenticity. If, like Markle, you’re telling the world that you’re living your authentic life, then odds on you’re just shooting the breeze about how clueless you are. Maybe you know what you’re against, like a teenager in an overpriced Che Guevara T-shirt, but your authenticity hasn’t yet matured into working out what to do, let alone actually doing it, apart from preaching to others about your moral superiority.
Even when Howard talks about one of his greatest, most courageous achievements, transforming gun laws in Australia when he had been PM for barely six weeks, after the mindless slaughter of 35 people at Port Arthur, there isn’t a hint of vanity. Like the authenticity schtick, if you’re telling people how good you are, you’re probably not nearly as good as you think.
Howard is interested in ideas, actions, policies, not himself. His convictions are firm. He invariably talks about his team. He uses “us” not “me” or “I”. He is the Ash Barty of politics. For a few recent former prime ministers and ministers, it’s all about them. Out of office, they are still droning on about “I” this and “I that” as if their political elocution lessons came from the duchess herself.
Indeed, Howard isn’t interested in how he feels, and mercifully, doesn’t think we are much interested in that either.
When I asked him once, on camera, how he felt when news of 9/11 came to him while he was in Washington, he said something like, “I have no idea, I had things to do, so I did them.”
Rudyard Kipling once wrote that “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same”, you can become a well-balanced man.
Howard was like that with the media. Bouquets and brickbats were treated the same. Howard maintained a cordial, polite and respectful relationship with those, like me, who paid credit where it was due, and also critiqued him, even harshly, as prime minister.
Again, a lady never reveals names, but the story couldn’t be more different with each of the subsequent Liberal PMs, and a few Liberal ministers too.
They have been, at times, churlish, sulky, bullying, even childish when confronted with criticism from someone on the centre right of politics. For one, it was tribal: “Whose side are you on?”
Far more excruciating were others, whose tribal sentiments extended to the not insubstantial width of their egos, intimating that my job was only to sing their individual political praises.
As Tom Switzer has written, Howard was called a “fool” (Michael Leunig), an “unflushable turd” (Mungo MacCallum), a “scheming, mendacious little man” (Alan Ramsey), who silenced dissent (Clive Hamilton), corrupted the public debate (David Marr), was “far and away the worst prime minister in living memory” (Phillip Adams) who had a “pre-fascist fetish to attack minorities” (Margo Kingston).
Howard took civility and respect to remarkable levels, inviting Ramsey to morning tea to mark the Fairfax journalist’s 50-year milestone in journalism.
The more former prime ministers we accumulate, the more Howard’s stocks keep rising. To be sure, Howard was far from perfect. He admits, in the podcast, that he got some things wrong. But the fact that he won four elections, unthinkable in recent years, tells you that he managed to get a lot right. As Howard’s book title says, it’s about a sense of balance. If we could clone people, you’d choose Howard, not the Duchess of Nothing Much.
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