Kevin Rudd killed his political career dead when he dropped the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). That conclusion might seem a bit premature, but from where I sit, out in the world of interested citizenship, he looks finished.

The argument against this maximalist position is cogently put by both academic Jason Wilson and Crikey's resident pseph-graph genius, Possum Comitatus. They argue that with a hostile Senate, a reduced implementation timetable, and a public becoming increasingly concerned about an emissions trading scheme, the PM had no choice but to cut his losses.

What is the point, they ask, of returning the legislation to the Senate when it's clear it won't pass? Add in the fact that dumping the legislation gives the PM a better chance of maximising his government's Senate vote, then this was simply a pragmatic decision to move on.

Both present compelling arguments. The point I want to make, however, is that the argument about pragmatism versus cowardice - which is what this is - isn't clear cut.

Jason and Possum are correct: in one sense, Rudd was merely being pragmatic. But that argument overlooks the fact that it's not just that Rudd assessed the likely Senate outcome and sensibly retreated, it's that, from the beginning, he never had the courage, or maybe the ability, to take the electorate into his confidence and explain why the CPRS was necessary.

From the get-go he was spooked by the rightwing media and the Oppositon's mobilisation of bogus arguments of the we'll-all-be-rooned type.

In fact, the scheme itself was a species of cowardice, just this side of better-than-nothing.

It was designed, not around the logic of the project - which is to price carbon so polluters are forced to consider alternative energy sources - but around compensating those same polluters so they didn't go crying to the media claiming the sky was falling. They whined anyway, of course, and the more they did, the more money Rudd (with the help of Malcolm Turnbull) threw at them.

That was pragmatism too.

So here's the thing: there is nothing pragmatic in running a small-target strategy from government. You can't hide from your decisions, and to constantly water them down in response to interest-group bleating makes you look weak. An unwillingness to argue your corner leaves you vulnerable to every misinformation campaign the media and the Opposition want to run.

That is to say: if they know you are going to jump, they're going to say boo.

Besides, this was hardly the PM's first high-profile tactical retreat.

We've seen it with the insulation "scandal", with immigration, with a bill of rights, and now with climate change. In each case there was a strong counterargument to deal with the misrepresentations in the media, but in each case Kevin Rudd bravely ran away.

And who has any confidence that it won't happen again with the mining tax? The rightwing media and the mining companies are piling on and Mr Rudd is already talking about a willingness to compromise.

Now, there is nothing per se wrong with compromise: that is the art of politics. But if you give in every time, you are no longer compromising, you are being dictated to.

No-one votes for a government in the expectation that they will agree with everything it does. People know it is impossible for all their pet issues to be addressed in exactly the way they want them addressed. We know our political leaders will disappoint us. We don't expect them to be heroes, as Jason Wilson rightly points out. We factor in, and are willing to cop, a reasonable amount of lily-liveredness in the name of political reality.

But the CPRS was too important to Rudd's credibility for it to be blithely dropped in the name of pragmatism. You don't get to call an issue the great moral imperative of our age and then turn your back on it, no matter how much bleating is going on in the marginals or in the media.

Sure, the legislation was bound to be defeated in the Senate, but Rudd needed to go through the motions in order to maintain faith, not just with the majority who voted him in in order to do something about climate change (and despite all the misinformation, it is still a majority), but with the electorate's reasonable (if curbed) expectation that on at least some things, this government is not for turning.

Kevin Rudd picks fights, but he doesn't want to take a punch. Maybe that's pragmatic and means he'll live to fight another day. But increasingly it looks like he has vacated the ring.

Tim Dunlop writes a fortnightly column for The Drum. You can follow him on Twitter