Guy Rundle
The Opportunist: John Howard and the Triumph of Reaction
Black Inc., $9.95pb, 102pp, 1 86395 394 9

Don Watson
Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America
Black Inc., $9.95pb, 102pp, 1 86395 394 9

HAVE YOU HEARD the one about Australia and Argentina? According to some of our guardians of economic correctness, Australia might well be suffering the kind of social and political collapse being experienced by Argentina today if we had not taken the economic medicine prescribed back in the 1980s. Let that be a warning to any of the 'chattering classes' brazen enough to express doubts about the benefits flowing from the policies of economic rationalism and privatisation.

I am sure both Guy Rundle and Don Watson could have a good time with the Argentinian comparison. For Watson, in particular, it might add another dimension to our American dilemma. These two Quarterly Essays complete the first year of the infant periodical, which seeks to give writers the space to explore a subject in a way that is impossible within the confines of a newspaper column or article. Robert Manne on the Stolen Generations and John Birmingham on East Timor are now followed by Rundle's acerbic analysis of the politics of John Howard and Watson's more open-ended pursuit of the Australian fixation with America.

Rundle and Watson may be seen as ideological allies, and one can't avoid noting that each has, at different times, written for our satirist-laureate Max Gillies. But while there is a cheeky jauntiness, and even a residual optimism, to Rundle's interrogation of the Howard phenomenon, Watson's tone is more ruminative ('melancholic' is Peter Craven's word for it) and its humour more of the gallows variety.

Rundle's essay is a beguiling piece. The wit of the scriptwriter keeps on bubbling to the surface. Conjuring up 'the agreeably dowdy footage' of the prime minister on his morning constitutionals, Rundle sees Howard as 'the short-trousered boy-man striding through a series of capitals like Tintin'. Bronwyn Bishop is 'the North Shore ice queen', Henry Bolte 'that pugnacious old turnip'.

Beneath the wit, however, there is a grim fascination with 'the most conservative leader the Liberal Party has ever had' (as Howard described himself back in 1988). The Opportunist, written before the federal election, is framed by the Tampa crisis ('Howard's Falklands') and the events of 11 September. Indeed, the Tampa very much dramatises the characterisation of Howard as not so much a sincere conservative as 'an opportunist like Richard Nixon' who 'would seize any chance he had to hang on to power'. Yet what really gets on Rundle's goat is Howard's 'improbably successful self-portrayal as a battler, a man who rejoices in the virtues of "mateship", a representative of the average Aussie'. In search of 'John Howard's dreaming', he takes us back to that (justly) discarded document, the Howard-Murray Preamble, carefully deciphering the implications of its peculiar syntax and the politics of its clumsy sentiments.

For Rundle, the irony is that while Howard, invoking a kind of pre-political unity, pays his respects to his version of the Australian tradition, his policies, focusing on the family and the market, tend, in Thatcher mode, to erode any notion of 'society'. Howard's 'nostalgic conservatism' — the monarchy and all that — is actually 'a postmodern sort of thing', springing from 'the naïve belief that symbols and artefacts can retain their meaning in any context'. Peter Costello offers some hope, insofar as he is alive to the decline of the neighbourly society. Rundle also suggests that 'the brother of Tim Costello' might not have intercepted the refugees aboard the Tampa. Maybe. Nevertheless, Peter Costello was content to reap the political benefits of that manufactured crisis.

To what extent does Rundle believe that we are capable of resisting or ameliorating the forces of globalisation? He has, for example, little patience with the political grievances of rural Australia, sternly telling the dwindling population of the bush that 'however regrettably, agri-business does not require the support of actual communities, and if rural Australia does not come to terms with the new urban coastal society it faces, it will die and die unmourned'. At the end of the day, in the shadow of 11 September, it is the threat to liberty and independence that concerns Rundle — and this coda almost seems designed to summon up Don Watson's exploration of the American relationship. The photograph on the back cover of Rabbit Syndrome reinforces the connection, for there is Howard in his shorts, on his Washington constitutional, beside the magisterial marble figure of Abraham Lincoln.

Watson brings an historian's sensibility to his inquiry, which begins in the Bendigo Art Gallery, comparing two paintings, one an expression of high Victoriana ('Gentlemen, the Queen'), the other a Hugh Ramsay portrait of an American man of substance, in whose face Watson recognises 'that untrammelled look Americans give the world'. This is a contrast of empires: the 'must do', formalised imperialism of Great Britain set beside the 'can do', American brand of expansionism, which is more comfortable with the language of the market place.

Watson reflects on his own growing-up experience of the two empires competing for our cultural allegiance, and gives an evocative account of the way in which many Australians (myself included) received and compared American and British films (we didn't call them movies then). But all this is to bring us to the real point of the essay, which is a discontented critique of Australian culture in the light of the American comparison, the British connection now having lost its authority. Watson appropriates John Updike's Rabbit (the character Harry Angstrom) as 'a distant metaphor for the soul of Australia, the country which, like Rabbit, recoils in fear from the insight that its life is its own and no one else's, and changes the angle to accommodate its fear'.

One can understand Watson's disillusion with the current national mood, which he describes as one of cantankerous timidity. But the success of Howard and the values he represents brings to the surface a deeper dissatisfaction with our culture. 'Would that we had an Updike; or a Melville; or a Mark Twain. Has anyone documented the Australian condition as they have the American?' The mythology that emerged from the Bush and Gallipoli served its purpose for a time, but 'the Australian story doesn't work any more' because 'Australia now contains multitudes that the legend cannot accommodate'. And the extent to which Howard identifies with the remnants of the mythology only exacerbates the problem.

Watson concedes the aspects of America that are so alien to us — the violence, the guns, the Bible Belt religiosity — but in the end he is seduced by the sheer vitality of the culture. And, after all, 'what empire in history was less malevolent?' (That might provoke a few rumbles on the Left.) So he poses the question: if we can't do any better for ourselves, why not give up the pretence of independence and petition to join the United States?

It's a ploy, of course, and, as a joke, not a particularly new one. And it's not as if Australia is the only country faced with the US dilemma — Canada inevitably comes to mind. It would be a pity if this narrative coup de grâce distracted attention from the argument about our cultural malaise, which calls for debate. Is there still a nagging lack of confidence in our culture? Or is it rather that the sardonic Australian temperament summons up a different kind of celebration, a different kind of critique? I don't think, for example, that Patrick White can be dismissed on the grounds that he 'writes more in reaction to Australia than on behalf of it' — surely he does both.

Grim though the present moment may seem to many of us, our predicament could nevertheless prove to be culturally productive, and these two excellent and thoughtful essays are already serving their purpose in promoting discussion. Don Watson's Rabbit Syndrome includes responses to Rundle, some of which have already been published elsewhere. Perhaps, in future, Peter Craven might resist the temptation to interpret each essay for us: his Introduction to Watson is particularly elaborate, an essay in itself, almost as if he feels the reader needs a course in appreciation.

In their different ways, both Rundle and Watson are issuing a call to arms. In Argentina, the aggrieved middle classes took to the streets beating their pots and pans. That might not be our style, but the question is whether protest is a strategy worth considering. Many of us, Peter Costello included, walked for reconciliation. How much thinner would the numbers be if the cause was the refugees?