By Chip Hanlon 

Political challengers, you just saw a great example of how to run against an incumbent when things in your country are perfect, a seemingly impossible task: convince voters there is essentially no difference between your ideas and those of the incumbent. This strategy was just worked to perfection in Australia, where a week ago the liberal Labour Party's Kevin Rudd was elected as the country's new prime minister, unseating the long-ruling conservative, John Howard.

Despite the stark contrasts between the two men, the same mantra was repeated over and over by the campaign and in the press: that there really is essentially no difference between the two men's positions.

Really?...