Unlucky Beazley?

DUMPED Labor leader Kim Beazley insists he would have defeated John Howard at the next election and says Kevin Rudd is a lucky man in the right place at the right time.
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Whilst the times certainly didn't favour Beazley, his problem was not just bad luck. Even with 9/11, he made too mistakes to count which themselves denied the Labor party a chance of winning.

He was ineffective at pressing the Government's faults. He failed to capture the media cycle with his own agenda. Even Latham did better at this for a while. In economic policy, he was reactive and failed to dispute the Government's interpretation of history and present. In social policy, he fell into Howard's wedges time and time again. He compromised with small target politics, but didn't balance it with articulate challenges of principle.

Even where Labor's foreign policy platform had the benefit of public appeal, it was Rudd articulating it, not Beazley. In general, he could not stamp his mark as a better leader, and plodded along to the election with predictable blandness.

Ultimately, I think, people just stopping listening to him, as they seem to be doing to Howard now.