defeat

President Bush had 2 very close friends on the world stage. They were Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard or Australia. I’m not sure that it is necessary to point out the complete and utter failure of the Bush doctrine. For those who still believe, they will continue to see nothing but good that has come from our muscular myopic foreign policy. The good can not be over estimated because it is almost non-existent. The bad can be measured in a number of ways including the defeat of Tony Blair and John Howard.

John Howard was so taken with the Bush doctrine that he attacked Barack Obama right out of the gate. The day after Barack announced that he was going to run for president, Howard pulled a Cheney. He shot someone in the face. He basically said that a vote for a democrat was a vote for Al Qaeda. (see video below)

Glen has a great post on Howard’s defeat with 2 cents from Atrios.  Words of wisdom added from TCR.

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From NYT:

Australia’s prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies in Asia, suffered a comprehensive defeat at the hands of the electorate on Saturday, as his Liberal Party-led coalition lost its majority in Parliament.He will be replaced by Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party leader and a former diplomat. “Today Australia looks to the future,” Mr. Rudd told a cheering crowd in his home state, Queensland. “Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward.”

Mr. Howard’s defeat, after 11 years in power, follows that of José María Aznar of Spain, who also backed the United States-led invasion of Iraq, and political setbacks for Tony Blair, who stepped down as Britain’s prime minister in June. (more…)