So Kevin Rudd got his stimulus package. It was not a pretty sight. The lack of a bipartisan approach at a time of truly national adversity reflects badly on both leaders and their tribes. This is not what the Australian people deserve, although it is, I fear, what they have come to expect: entrenched bickering, with no leader of stature able to rise above the fray. Bob Hawke was the last prime minister to stake his leadership in times of hardship on a posture of inclusiveness. His mantra during the 1983 campaign was ''national reconciliation''. And he walked his talk, at least in the crucial first year of his prime ministership.
Rudd had an opportunity to follow in his footsteps. The apology was right on the mark, and the offer to include Brendan Nelson (remember him?) in a bipartisan approach to making indigenous reconciliation work was genuine. But a year down the track we see a leader who has fallen for the dangerous temptations of crisis exploitation.
What is crisis exploitation? Astute leaders realise that crises present major opportunities. Crises invite leaders to act and get things done. Crises open political windows of opportunity for political ideas and policy changes that would be politically impossible in normal times. As Barack Obama's top aide Rahm Emanuel recently put it, ''You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. It's an opportunity to do things you could not do before.'' When a sense of urgency prevails many constraints of ''government as usual'' can be manipulated. Political scientist Murray Edelman observed decades ago, ''Any government that prides itself on its ability to manage crises is sure to find crises to manage, and crisis management is always available as a way to mobilise public support.''
Franklin Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were all masters of this craft. On the wings of recession, they transformed economic policy and the role of the state. Discrediting reputations of political predecessors and competitors, they emerged as true crisis leaders. Now Rudd has played the crisis card. He is not alone Obama did exactly the same. Employing the rhetoric of adversity to push a stimulus bill through their respective legislatures, both governments are moving at a pace that would astound even Roosevelt, whose first ''hundred days'' full of recession-busting initiatives have become legendary.
If legislators would not act immediately, Rudd and Obama warned, this crisis could turn into a catastrophe (''an economic Tsunami'', Rudd claimed, stopping just one notch short of the highest rung on the ladder of crisis rhetoric: Biblical analogies). Every day of political bickering would cost more jobs, more foreclosures, and more sorrow. The time has come to act the stimulus package must be passed now.
Today's global crisis leaders present themselves as the only thing standing between their countries and financial ruin. Some do so with gusto and political acumen. Rudd, for example, was quick to publish a major essay declaring the ''neo-liberalism'' of his main political adversaries dead and buried.
To him, the crisis sends a clear message: the state and social democracy are back in business. Almost three decades after Ronald Reagan uttered his famous line that government is not the solution but the problem, the tables can be turned, says Rudd: the market has problems, government brings the solution.
In their rush to protect jobs and to seize the political momentum, Rudd risks forgetting an essential lesson of past crises: quick and big crisis responses tend to backfire. Crisis-induced reforms often produce reform-induced crises. Reforms crafted in haste address symptoms rather than causes, focus on the short term rather than the longer term, falter in implementation, and rarely capture the wisdom of those who know best (those who have to deliver it).
How do smart leaders like Rudd and Obama end up setting themselves up for potential policy fiascos down the track? First, crisis leaders often impose self-defeating deadlines. As a result, policy options narrow. Sober analysis and calm reflection are crowded out by partisan accusations. Doctrinaire beliefs and political spin cover up deep uncertainties.
In the rush of things leaders come to rely exclusively on trusted and liked advisers. Group-think takes over: the consensus within the inner circle becomes a prized asset that is defended at all costs. Evidence-based policy goes out the window, as ''we cannot afford to wait.'' The solutions that result from this self-created pressure cooker rarely stand the test of time.
A second crisis reflex is to cut off public and political debate. Leaders arm-twist legislators to rubber stamp what are in effect huge policy gambles. Those who publicly doubt these gambles are accused of politicking and discounted as apologists for ''old'' remedies that have been shown wrong. Such an us versus them mentality comes at a price.
We have been here before when George W.Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld branded anyone questioning anything about the hastily crafted post-9/11 reforms as ''unpatriotic''. The political effect was astounding, the results were scary (the Patriot Act's assault on civil liberties; the Abu Graib torture fiasco), counterproductive (Guantanamo Bay, the failure of the new ''super department'' of Homeland Security during hurricane Katrina), and deeply costly (the Iraq and Afghanistan wars).
Let there be no doubt: the global economy has hit heavy seas. Political leaders must rise to the occasion to save jobs and rebuild our economies. What they should not do is play the crisis exploitation game. The problems we are facing today are too big, baffling, and unprecedented to fit in the crisis box. The unprompted use of crisis rhetoric gives rise to the fundamental error of over-promising, which quickly ends up in under-delivering.
Imposing hasty crisis measures undermines the intelligence of democracy: the exploring and reconsidering, bargaining and learning produced by pluralistic deliberation. The bigger the problems we face, the more leaders should resist the temptations of using crises to rule from above. Instead of obsessing over quick fixes and playing the blame game, leaders should use their authority to mobilise adaptive capacity within their societies. Citizens deserve to be more than just passive victims of global market forces and recipients of stopgap government handouts.
They need to be actively involved in the process of rethinking the values, assumptions and institutions that underlie a way of life that now appears unsustainable. Which leaders will have the wisdom and the courage to embark on that route?
Professors Arjen Boin (Louisiana State University) and Paul 't Hart (Australian National University and Utrecht University) are co-authors of the prize winning study The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure (Cambridge University Press 2005)
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