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Kevin Rudd and Political Spin

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Kevin Rudd and Political Spin Alex Treacy COMU3222 42931485 Fair Spin of the Sauce Bottle: Kevin Rudd and Political Spin In 2007, a story broke in the Australian media that then-opposition leader Kevin Rudd had visited New York strip club Scores with some journalists in 2003 for a “boozy night” (ABC, online). While the actual visit was laughably brief and awkward (ibid), it is the sort of leak that has killed prime- ministerial aspirations before. However, broad sections of the Australian community seemingly failed to pass strong judgments, including then Prime-Minister John Howard (Cooper, online), with Derryn Hinch arguing on popular political show ‘Q&A’ recently that it actually increased Rudd’s popularity further (ABC, broadcast). This episode is illustrative of two things: firstly, Kevin Rudd’s gargantuan public approval ratings from 2007-2009; and second, his extremely effective communications team, headed by Senior Press Secretary Lachlan Harris, a wunderkind in his late twenties, that helped Rudd surge through his first eighteen months as Prime-Minister. It was also a fantastic example of ‘spin’, that amorphous, nefarious concept that now forms such an essential aspect of media and political operations in a mass mediatised, liberal democracy. This essay aims to illustrate the tangible difference effective spin makes in the political sphere by comparing and contrasting two phases of Rudd’s leadership: 2007-2009, and 2010-2013, including his time in exile. This will require a theoretical consideration of ‘spin’ as a technique, in order to set criteria for successful, and unsuccessful, spin. Kevin Rudd’s leadership is fertile ground for a study on the effects of spin- for his dramatic fall from grace; to be ousted unceremoniously from the leadership by his own party within the first term and to regain the Prime-Ministership only to suffer crushing defeat at the election; must surely have only been foreseen by the very spin doctors that created the ‘Myth of Rudd’. The terms ‘spin’ and ‘spin doctor’ had received sporadic mention in literature up until the Nineties, where they gained widespread currency in the academic community (Esser, online). Andrews, who traces the genesis of spin as understood today to the 1997 British Election, won historically by New Labor, argues spin has undergone three transitions since inception: First, as a technical definition of a certain tactic used in political campaigning; then loosely as a general term for political campaigning activities; to describe the media operations of certain governments, notably in the US and the UK; and finally, as a description of the profession of public relations (32, online). Spin’s ubiquity is puzzling, therefore, for the inconsistent emphasis it receives from the scholarly community. Andrews claims that “Spin is now one of the most overused, and arguably least meaningful, words in use in political communication” (31, online) and Esser concedes that “many scholars do not take spin doctoring too seriously” (online). This inconsistent application makes it more difficult to establish a consistent definition of the features of spin. According to Gaber, the processes of spin can be defined as being either “above-“or “below-the- line”, or an “overt-covert” continuum (508, online). Importantly, he notes that “covert” techniques are the ones most likely to be carried out by ‘spin doctors’ in the connotative sense of the term (ibid). His expanded definition of ‘spin’ includes activities that are seen as normal, workaday aspects of governance: party announcements, publicizing speeches and interviews, reacting swiftly to breaking news events; and then those more pejorative manoeuvres, such as staying on message, setting the news agenda, planting a story, and most pertinently for this essay, building up a personality (509-517, online). It is these covert aspects of government spin that leads to the impression that spin “plays fast and loose with the truth” (Stockwell, 10, online). Stockwell considers spin to be: Alex Treacy COMU3222 42931485 the backgrounding and interpretation supplied by media advisers to the press to put politicians’ pronouncements in a favourable context and to ensure that the message that they (the politicians) are trying to get across, actually appears in the media (2, online). Other perceived or defined activities of spinning in literature includes: “strategy and tactics” (Gaber, 508, online); “deliberate priming” and “strategic framing” (Esser, online); “involved in the construction of the meta-narrative that is the permanent campaign” (Stockwell, 2, online). Louw notes the media-centric role spin doctors must ultimately succeed in: “To be successful requires that spin-doctors know how to use the media to their own advantage” (216, print). He considers three predominant tasks spin-doctors engage in: “get journalists to see the world from an angle that suits the spin-doctor’s agenda; deflect attention away from issues and stories they want to bury; [and] plant and leak stories” (Louw, 216, print). Pulling all these disparate threads together, it is clear there are some common themes in what may be considered ‘successful’ spin: it is a media-centric role, that predominantly involves the priming and framing of news agendas with which the best possible ‘face’ of a candidate/ party is presented; it is a behind-the-scenes role, that goes unnoticed by definition; and it operates to clearly defined goals. In the first instance of Rudd’s coming, the spin team had a well-defined goal of election against a flagging Coalition Government led by John Howard, and ensure a smooth first three years: in this they succeeded. In the second instance of Rudd, when he was a brooding backbench figure pondering a Lazarus-like comeback, and later Prime Minister for a second, abortive time, the spin team’s goals were to present Rudd as a victim, and a Messiah-like figure for the ailing Labor Party; in this, they were not successful. Comparing and contrasting these two periods reveals much of the nature of spin. Much of Kevin Rudd’s barnstorming ‘Kevin07’ victory was based on overt spin mechanisms geared particularly towards younger voters through new and social media platforms, with one key underpinning covert goal. Simple slogans were repeated across media platforms based heavily on Rudd’s image; the most famous of these, “I’m Kevin, I’m from Queensland, and I’m here to help” (Leslie, online) played both to his soaring popularity in his home state and his image as a “daggy dad” (Snow, online). As another puts it: “[he] comes across as a bit of a dick and people actually like that - awkward, a bit goofy, a doofus in terms of his language” (ibid). His key early achievements in Office, such as the Sorry Speech and ratifying the Kyoto protocol, were nationally and internationally significant, and perhaps more importantly, highly symbolic multi-platform media events (Wright, online). Almost as importantly, “Rudd’s appeal to the highly fluid youth vote through embracing new technologies legitimised the Internet as a platform for electioneering” (McCabe, 3, online) - of which repercussions would be seen in 2013. This translated into an unmatched popularity level that solidified the idea of Rudd as a pseudo-celebrity (Marr, online). Rudd was colloquially known as the ‘Selfie King’; ex-Opposition Leader Mark Latham disparagingly stated in a column that “most [Labor Party] branch members have had selfies with the Ruddster” (online). The famous ‘shaving selfie’ was perhaps the most notable example (Williams, online). The covert mechanism underpinning all these ‘above-the-water’ news agenda shaping and popularity building efforts was the idea of “building up a personality”; an electable, household name (Gaber, 513, online). This process had actually begun several years before, in 2001, when Rudd and the LNP’s Joe Hockey shared genuine rapport on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program (Kefford, 4, online). Rudd’s appearance on the show revealed him as a genuine media “star” (Gaber, 513, online). A series of well-publicised essays for The Monthly from 2006 onwards helped keep Rudd in the headlines (Kefford, 4, online). On Rudd’s website, you could sign up for ‘KMAIL’ (Kefford, 8, online). His media team organised regular spots on FM radio stations and youth television programs (ibid). A particular broadcast highlight was a spot on popular talk-show ‘Rove’, which further highlighted the difference in age between Howard and himself (ibid). 300 000 DVD’s featuring Rudd were distributed, and text messaging and scarcely believable skywriting campaigns also (ibid). The Alex Treacy COMU3222 42931485 myth of Rudd’s personality was so well engrained in the media that it sometimes made for unlikely outcomes- take, for instance, the debacle on an RAAF flight from Port Moresby to Canberra in 2009, where Rudd unleashed an eminently underserved tirade at an attendant for failing to cater to his special meal request (Coorey, online). Despite this being one of the few times the PMO’s media department were caught off guard by events in the first two years (press secretary Lachlan Harris initially denied the story), it had little personal effect on Rudd due to a wave of public empathy: “The reaction of many to the story was to think of times when they’ve got poor service and wish they could have reacted in the same way as he did” (Keane, online). Keane’s conclusion was that “this [was] Rudd’s scarily effective communication and image-shaping skills paying off. For most of Rudd’s first two and a half years as Prime Minister, he was able to effectively control the news media agenda through his tight control of Cabinet and Ministers; before the extent of his inability to delegate and suspicious tendencies were revealed, this seemed like good governance from the outside (Kelly, online). Another example of Rudd’s media team’s success in the heady early days was Rudd’s rather bull-headed declaration that he would not be adhering to a rule established in 1905 pertaining to selection of his front bench (Kefford, 7, online).
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