SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — He's been called President Bush's puppet, and his country has been called the 51st state of America.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard's chummy relationship with Washington counts for little in what might be the last big fight of his political life.
When Australians go to the polls Saturday, two obstacles stand in the way of the four-term incumbent: the widespread perception that he's been in office too long, and a younger and fresher face that's ready to take his place.
His name is Kevin Rudd, and he's the new head of the Labor Party, a bookish former diplomat who speaks fluent Chinese and is married to a self-made multimillionaire.
Rudd has such a decisive lead in the polls that many believe his victory is assured.
"We have never seen opinion gaps as big or as persistent," said Brian Costar, a political scientist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. "People have been wanting for a while to find a reason to vote Howard out. They generally couldn't do it because of a lackluster Labor leadership. Along comes Rudd, who looks like a safe bet, and they've flocked to him."
For Rudd to take over the government, his party must grab at least 16 more seats in the 150-member lower house of Parliament. Polls show losses by Howard's coalition government could deliver Labor a comfortable margin, with the added embarrassment that the sitting prime minister could lose in his own seat in the legislature, something that has only happened once in Australian history, in 1929.
What's surprising is that the 68-year-old Howard, who heads the Liberal Party, might be on his way out despite a booming economy and an approval rating of about 47%.
"It's basically government fatigue," said Michael Fullilove, program director for global issues at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, a Sydney think tank. "They've been in there nearly 12 years. It's not really common for governments to last so long these days."
The Howard administration is also perceived as being out of touch on such issues as global warming, which a recent poll showed was considered by Australians to be the country's No. 1 external threat.
Until about a year ago, Howard questioned the link between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. When Al Gore visited Australia last year to promote the film "An Inconvenient Truth," Howard's industrial minister dismissed it as "entertainment."
