My domino theory

PEOPLE in politics like to think of their plots and sordid strategising as akin to chess, with themselves as Fischers and Karpovs.

But as the wild miscalculations of caucus votes attests, many can't count to more than 10 with their shoes on. Chess? They'd be intellectually challenged by chequers.

In any case, the real political game, the game of domination, is dominoes. Like chess it's played in black and white, but it's far less subtle. Behold the domino theory, so popular with US presidents from JFK to GWB. It was the justification for the American war in Vietnam, the folly that continued generations of struggle for Ho Chi Minh and the lads. Having fought the Japanese, the French and each other, they had to deal with the US and us.

Hanoi defeated that "coalition of the willing" just as they trounced the French. Utterly, humiliatingly. President after president had bought the line that a Vietcong victory would trigger the "domino effect" and have every country in South-East Asia fall to communism. One goes, they all go. Toppling dominoes.

Instead, it was US presidents that toppled. One of the more plausible theories has the Kennedy assassination as an act of political revenge for his involvement in the assassination of President Diem. Another theory has him killed in Dallas because of his plan to pull out American troops. What is certain is that LBJ was a Vietnam domino whose toppling led to Nixon, who certainly wobbled under the pressure of that futile war.

George W. Bush and the neocons thought they were playing dominoes in Iraq. It would be a breeze to beat Saddam, to have Iraq blossom as a democracy. And that would lead to a domino effect that would knock over nasty regimes in the region. Dominoes for democracy! When I last looked, most of the neighbours, from Syria to Saudi Arabia, were still as undemocratic as they ever were.

You see the domino effect in federal politics. Hawke is toppled by Keating, whose own toppling leads to the knock-on effect that will topple Beazley, Crean, Latham and Beazley. With the Libs, Fraser, toppled by Hawke, gives way to a rapid succession of dominoes - the likes of Hewson, Downer and Howard - whose refusal to be toppled, or topped, by Costello, leads to such wobbly dominoes as Nelson, Turnbull etc. But the domino effect in state politics - particularly in NSW - is even more spectacular. Since Neville Wran took his dominoes and went home the pace has ever accelerated. Who's premier this week? Who's Opposition leader? As Abbott asked - Bud, not Tony - "Who's on first?"

Thanks to the domination of dominoes in modern democracy the life of a party leader, particularly in state politics, is brief and brutal. Hope briefly surges only to be followed by humiliation. Yoghurt has a longer shelf-life than a premier or Opposition leader. You're young when you start but beware the Ides of March. As measured by the polls, as planned by the plotters, your use-by date arrives within months. You leave the job an old man - or woman.

Politics ain't cricket. Noughts and crosses is better or, with Robb and Abbott, noughts and double-crosses. But snakes and ladders is best of all. Up the ladder you go, only to slide down the snakes. Remember Latham's ladder of opportunity? Minutes later, the snakes got him in their coils and he was history. And it requires no skill. Just roll the dice and cop the consequences. Monopoly was Turnbull's game. He played it with real money, made a motza. But the snakes from that other game came after him. There are a lot of snakes in the Liberal Party.