John Howard exists in a moral vacuum, and while that must be relaxing and comfortable for him -- you never feel friction in a vacuum -- the world outside that bubble of narcissism is about to blow it to Pluto and back.

With Kevin Rudd's blessing, Maxine McKew, the former Lateline presenter who in 30 years of broadcast and magazine journalism, earned a reputation as the smiling assassin of political fools, is contesting John Howard's seat of Bennelong for the ALP.

Despite his promise to go easy on the PM, Kevin Rudd just keeps fucking with Little Johnny's little mind.

Will the people of Bennelong warm to a woman with intelligence who comes to the fray armed with a wealth of knowledge on what makes the rodent run? Or will she frighten the bejesus out of them. The polls showed the PM could lose his seat even without an ALP candidate. Maxine could make it a landslide.

How will The Lyin' King retaliate? Like a schoolyard bully, he will have to discredit not only Rudd, but McKew, as being what he has deemed to be more un-Australian than a terrorist -- an intellectual.

Jason Koutsoukis (Get smart, get beaten) wrote in The Sunday Age:

The trick for Rudd then, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat with a pointy-headed reputation, will be to disguise how smart he is and to prove he has the common touch.

As he did with Latham before Rudd, Howard will be searching for Rudd's weakness.

And that, really, is all John Howard is about: finding and exploiting the weakness in others in order to remain in power. As the briber-in-chief, he exploits the greed of punters by lavishing them with bribes they can't refuse. By the time he finds the killer punch for Kevin Rudd, millions of taxpayer dollars will have been spent in dirty research.

Meanwhile, Maxine McKew is the perfect candidate. She will effectively separate the people in Bennelong from the sheep. If they haven't already, they soon will, and with great clarity, see through the man who has no dimensions and who, for eleven years, has mesmerised them into believing he does.

Nothing less than a humiliating landslide across this once proud nation will give John Howard what he deserves.

We await the lengths he will go to in order to prevent this from happening. John Howard's, after all, is the most monstrous ego this nation's political life has ever seen. Terrorism? We ain't seen nothin' yet.

-- Olney Garkle