The Wire

The unofficial Federal election campaign will ramp up another gear this week, when US Vice President Dick Cheney arrives in Sydney on Thursday. But the high profile visitor, one of the principal orchestrators of the War in Iraq, is not necessarily going to help John Howard, who’s been hit hard by new polling data out of his own electorate that puts him a long way behind Kevin Rudd. Doctor Michael McKinley is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Strategy at the Australian National University in Canberra. Anna Vidot asked him why Vice President Cheney is making the trip Down Under.