I think the election results say more about the people who voted for Howard than about Howard himself.

I often wondered how ordinary decent people could have manned concentration camps and witnessed the horrors without a twinge of conscience. The answer is twofold; they abdicated their responsibility to defend their democracy and in return Hitler gave them permission to do his dirty work without fear of the consequences.

It may seem too radical an idea, but I believe that a similar thing happened on 9 October. The Howard voters have made the same sort of pact with him. As long as they don't have to buy a car or anything important from him, it's fine to let him run the country. After all, that's not going to impact on their lives at all, is it?