Australia:Enoch Powell, in his biography of Joseph Chamberlain, wrote that "all political careers, unless they are cut off at some happy juncture, end in failure".
Australia's prime minister, John Howard, must now be wishing he had handed over to his deputy, Peter Costello, at a happy juncture last year.
In Australia's 22 federal elections since 1949 the government has changed just four times, and always for economic reasons. This time it's different. The economy is booming. India and China are paying top dollar for Australia's vast mineral resources and unemployment is at a 33-year low of 4.2 per cent; yet the opposition Labor Party has a poll lead of landslide proportions.
Seven weeks ago, Howard sought soundings from his Liberal-National coalition cabinet about whether he should step aside. Most of them said yes, but he stayed on anyway. Maybe this is hubris borne of 11 years of incumbency or maybe it's because he genuinely believes he is the only one who can stop Labor leader Kevin Rudd from strolling into power. Either way, the polls say otherwise.
It has been like this since Rudd took over as Labor leader last December. There have been more than 70 polls, and every single one has pointed to a Labor victory.
Howard said the polls would narrow once the election was called - and they did after he announced $34 billion (€21.65 billion) of tax cuts. But the gap blew out again when Labor said it would give $31 billion in tax cuts and use the spare change for education.
Howard's one concession to his cabinet colleagues' lack of faith was to announce that he would step down some time in the next term if the coalition was returned. This did no harm to Tony Blair when he made a similar announcement before the last British election; but Peter Costello is no Gordon Brown.
Costello heckled Rudd from the audience during a televised leadership debate and had to be told to behave himself by the moderator. When the camera cut to Costello he was grinning his trademark smirk. Beside him, foreign minister Alexander Downer looked similarly smug.
Downer is widely viewed by Labor MPs as pompous and arrogant. Both he and Rudd are former diplomats. Rudd recently impressed Chinese leaders in Sydney for the Apec conference with speeches in Mandarin.
Downer's mealy-mouthed response was: "If you go and join the foreign service and you do a language course, you are obviously going to learn a language. I did the French language course and Mr Rudd did the Chinese language course. I did mine in two months and he did his in two years."
Rudd (50) unquestionably won the televised debate and looked energetic and strong under tough scrutiny.
Howard (68) looked tired, refused to give straight answers to a couple of questions and appeared tetchy at times.
There was a farcical element after Howard refused to allow use of the "worm" (which moves up and down on the screen depending on how swinging voters view what is being said by the participants), but Channel 9 used it anyway. Its live feed was cut, so it plugged into the ABC feed instead. That too was cut, so it rebroadcast what was going out on Sky News. The worm favoured Rudd throughout.
Some conservative commentators have been looking to Ireland for salvation. They point out that Fianna Fáil was behind in the polls but still won the election.
But the comparison is ridiculous. Firstly, Fianna Fáil was not as far behind as the Liberal-National coalition has been all year. More importantly, Bertie Ahern did not take Ireland into a war on the basis of non-existent weapons of mass destruction; he did not win the previous election on a broken promise of keeping interest rates at record lows, and he did not introduce WorkChoices - the most retrograde, draconian industrial relations laws in the western world.
A consequence of Labor's poll dominance has been the unedifying but hilarious sight of some of Rupert Murdoch's prize journalists - who have spent the last 11½ years telling Howard how wonderful he is - furiously backpedalling to say they saw this coming. Revisionism is in this season for News Ltd.
Labor is not about to get cocky though.
One insider, who has seen his party snatch defeat from the jaws of victory too often before, told The Irish Times: "We have a month to f**k it up." (Polling is on November 24th.) Some Liberals though do seem to be on the verge of giving up. An insider there said: "People are s***ting themselves. There's no other word for it. Bring out the coffins."
Barring an unprecedented event, the Liberal is closer to the truth; this government is almost dead. The hearse is outside Parliament House and the engine is running.