And at around 10 am this morning, Malcolm Turnbull, former Leader of the Opposition, announced via Twitter that he would not recontest his seat of Wentworth at the next election. To steal the title from Troy McClure's biopic of Andre the Giant: Malcolm Turnbull, We Hardly Knew Ye. Apt, because like the Andre the Giant, Malcolm was an ambitious, outsized personality with a bright, shining future ahea-*sniff* ahead of hi-*sniff* - oh God, I promised myself I wouldn't cry...
Almost definitely the only political obituary that is going to compare Malcolm Turnbull to Andre the Giant. And doesn't it just feel right?
But I kid. I kid. Malcolm wasn't that special (unlike Andre the Giant, the
world's greatest drunkard), he was just another dude in a suit trying to make the corridors of power work to his - and then hopefully by proxy, our - advantage. But even by the reasonably fickle nature of Australia's political system, Malcolm's rise to and fall from grace has been particularly meteoric/catastrophic. Like seriously, the man only actually made it into Federal Parliament in 2004. Much like Barack Obama. And not four years later he became leader of his party. Much like Barack Obama. But then things went really rather awry for our friend Malcolm. Not entirely like Barack Obama.
Certainly things didn't have to be this way. It must have almost felt like the planets were coming into alignment for Malcolm when he made it into Parliament in that horrendously abortive (for anyone who wasn't white, male, straight, over 50 and well paid) 2004 election. The Howard dynasty was winding down, there seemed to be an increasing appetite for political change and the long dormant wet Liberals (those of the economically liberal and socially progressive variety) finally sensed an opportunity to launch themselves back into the political mainstream. And in Turnbull they had an obvious scion: charismatic, likable, young(ish) and remarkably centrist in his beliefs.
When Howard was finally deposed in 2007, the Liberal party collapsed into a state of recriminations and disarray. So the only sensible option seemed to be to drop a sack of meat to the ravening wolves. That sack of meat's name was Brendan Nelson, a man who fulfilled his purpose remarkably well, playing at being Liberal leader for a year while the new political order sorted itself out. But a year later and Turnbull saw his time to strike, deposing Nelson after the dude managed to chalk up a 7% preferred Prime Minister rating. Jesus, 7%? There's probably cans of food that could have proven more popular with the electorate, so against that backdrop, it must have seemed like Turnbull was the sort of man who could provide some semblance of Opposition to the Rudd juggernaut.
And well he might have too - if there was ever a Liberal leader capable of taking votes from disaffected centre-/left-leaning Labor voters, Turnbull was probably he. On many issues he was in step with, if not to the left of our man Rudd. Who to many was less admirable for being Rudd per se, then he was for being "not Howard". With that kind of mentality so prevalent, the opportunity was there for the Liberal party to step into the void and market itself to a whole new generation of swinging voters. But then in June last year along came the whole 'Utegate' incident, where Turnbull made the frankly insane decision to stake his entire political legitimacy on an accusation that Rudd may have misled Parliament about giving a car dealer friend some measure of political assistance and then lying to Parliament. Which in terms of strategic blunders, ranks up there with Hitler deciding to brave the Russian winter in sunny Stalingrad and me trying to buy Playboy cards at the age of 10.
Of course that all backfired quite explosively and from then on in it was really just a matter of time. For those half wet/half dry members of the Liberal party, it must have seemed like the progressive experiment had failed and it was time to revert to the good ol' tried and tested arch-Conservative model. So when Turnbull tried to flex his political muscle and jam through party support for the much-maligned Emissions Trading Scheme, he realised that he wasn't quite as popular with his own party as previously believed, and after a thoroughly entertaining dust-up, everybody's new favourite whipping boy/sex symbol Tony Abbott stepped into the Liberal leadership.
There was perhaps an opportunity or Turnbull to strike out on his own at this point, to create a new party and a new brand of conservatism. But if it existed, he didn't take it and thus his political relevance evaporated in full. Leaving him just another dude whittling away time on the Opposition backbench, although without even any prospect of job advancement to keep him interested through those long, slow arduous sessions of Parliament.
Hard to know what Turnbull will get up to now that the Liberal party has chewed him up and vomited him out. I mean, he is worth somewhere around $178 million, so I'm sure he'll recover from the disappointment. Maybe he'll buy an island or something. Set up his own republic and spend his days drinking daquiris while the locals fan him with palm fronds. Or maybe he'll just chill in the shadows for a bit and then release a tell-all autobiography at a particularly inopportune time for the Liberal party. Or maybe he'll grow wings, a tail, two extra heads and the ability to make things explode just by looking at them, change his name to 'The Dreadlord' and wreak havoc across the world for the next two hundred years. Only time will tell. But I'm secretly hoping for the last one.
In the meantime, then, I say goodbye Malcolm Turnbull. You were almost - but not quite - a historically important man.