I've been struggling to get immersed in a book over the last few weeks. My normal fare of UK crime thrillers no longer satisfies me and I find myself losing the thread from one day to the next. There's nothing worse than picking up a book and finding that you have no idea what has gone on before.
In desperation, I decided to try a non-fiction book, on the assumption that it wouldn't have the same complicated threads as a book of fiction. It might have worked. I downloaded a book from the library entitled The Luck of Politics by Andrew Leigh who is one of the more impressive of the younger bunch of pollies who are starting to replace the Old Guard. In real life he has been a lawyer and a Professor of Economics at ANU.
In the book, he makes the point that luck plays a very big role in the success or otherwise of politicians. He says, for example, that John Howard missed out on being elected to the state seat of Drummoyne in 1968 by 420 votes, which left him available to take up a safe Federal seat. Gough Whitlam had similar luck.
He also talked about the importance of being born to the right parents, having the right first name, being reasonably handsome, being in the right place at the right time, and so on. All of these strokes of luck are much more important than intelligence, integrity or ability to work hard.
An interesting book and I managed to read it to the end without feeling that I had missed the plot. I can't resist including this image of his family, taken for their Christmas card:
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