Rudd's Three Mucketeers

That Kevin Rudd, he's such a smartie. Peter Hartcher will tell you that -- and keep right on telling you that until the election, when no doubt he hopes the night will end with drinks and back-slapping and someone semi-important in Team Rudd telling him he's very important himself, fantastic writer and a great mind, too, and aren't we all just wonderful fellows together on the same team and.... oh, wait, over there, it's David Marr and Virginia and Russell, and they are all on the side of the angels too.

Parrots demand crackers for their recitations of learnt lines. The Hartchers are so much cheaper to run and operate, and they know as if by instinct to leave their droppings on sheets of paper.

They won't need to know much else from here until polling day, as Rudd, according to The Age, has recruited a trio of the hard and fast political operatives who returned Obama to the White House. When the new arrivals and their minions spread a meme, Australia's great political reporters will need to do nothing more than pass it on. No need to think whatsoever.

With speculation over the poll date now at fever pitch - and an announcement expected within days - the ALP's campaign team has secured the expertise of Tom McMahon, the former executive director of the powerful Democratic National Committee during President Obama's last campaign.

It has also called in Joon Kim of the consulting firm New Partners, and the British social media expert, Matthew McGregor, known for his ability to get spoof videos online sometimes within minutes of mistakes being made by his opponents.

As the scoop is by Mark Kenny, no surprise that several things are wrong or have been omitted. Perhaps he was too busy memorising his own just-delivered talking points, seeking to get a jump on Hartcher in the Sycophant Stakes, or maybe it was jealousy that put him off his game. After all, only that morning it had been Hartcher's turn at the teat, gulping down and rapidly regurgitating the hoary old Labor line that anxious Liberals, now seeing defeat in the round and confident face of Kevin Rudd, would just love to oust Abbott and install Malcolm Turnbull in his place. Alas, too little time remains before the election to take that sensible step, so the Coalition will likely be stuck with the wall-punching loser. As a theory  it is funny to the point of the grotesque, but that is what we get when journalism's loftiest perches are occupied by gargoyles rather than watchers in pursuit of the commanding view.

The wrong bit in Kenny's story -- he had better work harder on those dictation skills -- is that Matthew McGregor seems not to be a producer of smash-hit, instant spoof videos. Indeed, he is quite dismissive of blogs, Facebook and, presumably, YouTube. What MCGregor does is run email campaigns, which he dresses up with interactive links in order to justify his consultancy fee. He did a lot of this for Obama, by his account (see the video of McGregor below), but there was another cause he served which Kenny neglected to mention: Red Ken Livingstone's campaign to be London's mayor.

McGregor's expertise is in enervating invigorating supporters and getting out the vote -- a skill of limited relevance, one would think, in a country where, unlike Britain and the United States, voting is compulsory and we all turn out for fear of $70 fines. Still, he is worth hearing, if only to see that even after John McTernan, a 457 visa can still get you the services of a fellow who, if he believes the Australian electoral system resembles that of his homeland and the US, will prove to be another expensively imported dill.

The other two amigos, McMahon and Kim, will need watching. Each, not just Kim, is a knob at the New Partners consultancy firm, whose website might lead the casual visitor to conclude that its stock-in-trade is fuzzy cliches. As the founding partner was Robert Gibbs, Obama's former press secretary, there is a bit more to the outfit than that.

The UMR document, which Kenny quotes at the bottom of his spoon-fed scoop, has several points of interest, not just Kim's observation that victory in political campaigns means persuading voters that the other bloke will give them cancer. The full report is here, but this short passage may be well be worth the attention of Liberal operatives. These are not Kim's words but worth repeating all the same. They bring Kevin Rudd very much to mind.

Obama clearly recognised a backlash against too much negative advertising too. He frequently made quips distancing himself from his campaign advertising that included him saying that he approved the message.

Rudd's hired guns are already working their magic, their mere presence on our shores an excuse for the Kennys and the Hartchers to wax rhapsodic about Rudd's bold strokes and big moves, to rave about "momentum" and repeat ad nauseam that Turnbull is the golden boy and the party's passed-over last, best hope.

After that, with emails and attack ads and Rudd's factotums dealing dirt while he floats serenely above it all, well, that will be the election campaign.

If they have not done so already, Abbott's people should be studying Romney's ill-fated effort and the campaign of quicksilver lies that laid it low. Kenny, Hartcher and all of the ABC's Labor-staffers-turned-pundits will be wetting themselves in their eagerness to lend a hand.