In 7.30 Report-land, what Tony Abbott told Kerry O'Brien becomes a lie. But there is a difference between lying deliberately to evade detection for wrongdoing or to trick someone into doing something they wouldn't otherwise do, and making a promise you later find yourself unable to live up to. Kevin Rudd's dumping of the ETS wasn't a lie, for instance.
The Monday night interview was going swimmingly for Abbott until O'Brien asked how he could say in February that the Coalition would fund its promises without any new taxes, then in March announce a paid parental leave scheme funded by a new tax on big companies.
Abbott's response was: ''I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks."
The rest of the interview went on in the same vein, with O'Brien trying on the ambush and Abbott continuing a line in self-justification.
The headlines the next day, predictably, were all "Tony Abbott admits lying" and the government rushed out ads blasting "Phoney Tony".
While the government may think it's a good line, such facile tags often backfire. The moniker ''Honest John'' didn't damage Howard much, because, like the Lucky Country, it morphed into something different. Voters didn't regard Howard as a liar, regardless of what evidence his opponents tried to stack up. ''Phoney Tony'' may wind up like the nickname ''Bluey'' for a redhead.
The real problem for Abbott is that he's not phoney enough, or at least not yet adept enough at giving the illusion that he is always in command. That being said, it is baffling why Abbott does this to himself.
Perhaps he thinks this sort of plain speaking is an asset. He as much as said so the next day when he claimed he'd just been, "fair dinkum''. While it's true that differentiating yourself from a pompous spin merchant like the suddenly unpopular Prime Minister can't be a bad thing, there is a middle ground, between serious and silly, between grown up and childish, between a leader and someone who doesn't think they're quite ready, aw shucks. Too much humility and self-deprecation in a leader is as repugnant as arrogance. In fact, in leaders arrogance is an asset.
Under the same ambush questioning from O'Brien, a Howard-esque way of toughing it out would have been to say: "It's not a tax; it's a levy. It's not going into consolidated revenue but for a specific purpose that will provide productivity gains.
Or, as one spin doctor offered yesterday: "I changed my mind. I think women are required in the workforce. I've got nothing to answer for."
Instead Abbott tried to justify the unjustifiable. It wasn't about lying. It was about reliability.
In the real world we all make commitments and undertakings, whether it's the shearing contractor promising the farmer he'll show up on Monday, whether it's bringing a plate of food to a school function, or bringing the flags to a club rugby match. People understand that unforeseen circumstances arise and sometimes we can't keep those commitments, but they are always made in good faith. If you seem to be making those commitments lightly, with no real intention of fulfilling them, people quietly stop doing business with you. What Abbott was telegraphing was the expectation that politicians "in the heat of discussion" will make commitments they have no intention of keeping. No one who is respected behaves like that in the real world.
From Four Corners to 60 Minutes, Q & A to The 7.30 Report, Abbott has been piling up these unscripted pearlers, all from the same aw shucks family of self-revelation.
There was talk at one point that he was going to get media coaching, which he hotly denied. But why? Senior executives do it when they get promotions. Whole human resources departments exist for just that purpose.
The media coach who was reported to be advising Abbott, and then reported not to be, Marcus West, won't say who his clients are. But he says Australians tend to vote less on party lines than for personalities, and impressions of politicians are increasingly superficial, thin slices of information, gained over perhaps 15 to 20, three- to five-second grabs a week all adding up to a sort of "dot painting" of leadership.
Opinion polls suggest the unthinkable might just possibly become reality, that the electorate is turning off Rudd so precipitously that he might be a one-termer.
So Abbott has to believe he is more than a seat warmer for Malcolm Turnbull. The opposition is expected to provide a viable alternative and that is not just in real policies and competence and credibility but in the appearance of them.
Abbott has shown repeatedly that no one can beat him for judgment, taste and logical grasp of an argument. He has cut through the white noise of Rudd's leadership voodoo and shredded the Prime Minister's record popularity. He has shown he has the courage and intellect to be not just a good opposition leader, but a great prime minister.
Out there in voterland people are wandering in the wilderness looking for a new Moses. Abbott has to become that person, and put on a show. Leadership is seven parts competence and three parts performance. That is not phoniness.
It has been said that leadership is the "greatest performing art of all - the only one that creates institutions of lasting value, institutions that can endure long after the stars who envisioned them have left the theatre".
A leader, no matter how self-doubting he or she might feel from time to time, needs to project the illusion of being in control, of having all the answers, in order to inspire confidence.
Squibbing it is a self-indulgent vanity that does not go down well in voterland, in the shearing sheds and on the factory floors, battlefields and rugby fields, where leaders inspire with myth as much as with character.
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