Sheridan is happy to remain a fawning sycophant, even after the subject of his admiration is leaving in defeat:
With Downer’s resignation from parliament announced this week, Australia loses an authentic parliamentary and political giant.
…
I rate Downer as the equal second most important and effective foreign minister in Australian history.
This may seem a qualified sort of praise, but in the history of the Australian nation, to be the second most important foreign minister is a giant achievement.
Among the list of Dolly’s significant achievements, Greg devotes an entire glowing paragraph to the brilliant and entirely uncontroversial approach taken to working with the US, for which Sheridan himself was a cheerleader:
He was the key minister, with Howard, in invoking the US alliance in response to the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. One thing that flowed from that, in a great service to Australia’s national interest, was a historically new level of military and intelligence intimacy with the US. Downer was a key player in Australia sending troops to Afghanistan, where they performed magnificently, and later in backing the US war in Iraq. I believe this was the right decision and it took a hell of a lot of guts.
And, naturally, Greg needs to remind us of his own importance:
He is a good friend of British historian Andrew Roberts. I once had a long conversation with Downer about how Tony Blair’s Christian convictions compared with those of William Gladstone.
