Malcolm Turnbull with then prime minister Kevin Rudd in March 2010. Credit:Glen McCurtayne But it's not a terribly good omen for the incumbent that Hawker, a veteran of more than 30 state and federal election campaigns, identifies six striking similarities. Most obvious is personality: "They are both very driven people. Political leaders are self-selecting in the end because they are willing to go the extra mile every day. Kevin Rudd is still doing that with the UN," a reference to Rudd's unofficial campaign for the secretary-general's post. "I've found Malcolm to be charming, intelligent, disarming, the same as Kevin," a winning quality for politicians campaigning for votes. "But at times they get frustrated.

"They are both very smart, they're both very arrogant, the smartest kids in the class," says Rudd's former political adviser. "Neither suffers fools gladly, though Malcolm has disguised that better than Kevin managed to. Malcolm is on top of that at the moment; Kevin never quite mastered it in private." Second is their status within their own parties as misfits: "Neither is a creature of his party," which is both helpful and harmful to a prime minister. "Kevin came to Labor late, and Malcolm flirted with Labor before he joined the Liberals. That meant they didn't have deep rooted foundations. Many people thought they betrayed the values of their parties and they resent them for that." On the positive side, however, because they are leaders not limited by their parties, they can transcend them. Or, as Hawker puts it: "When they are top of their game, they look to be bigger than their parties, and that's very rare." This leads to the third similarity, which is that they both are centrists who've struck big frustrations in positioning their parties at the centre. It's not a terribly good omen for the incumbent that Hawker, a veteran of more than 30 state and federal election campaigns, identifies six striking similarities.

Says Hawker: "To successfully govern for the long-term, you have to govern from the centre, not the fringes," a truism demonstrated by Tony Abbott, who sought to govern a nation from the right wing of the centre-right party. And failed. "In Rudd's case it was the cause of his demise because his own party wouldn't let him move to the centre; he saw the unions as a brake on his ability to move to the centre politically. "In just the same way, Turnbull's party won't allow him to move to the centre on social issues," most prominently on same sex marriage. "Kevin had an undisguised ambition to reduce union control over the party, and elements of the unions and the Labor party were hostile to him as a result. "Malcolm has the same sort of issue on the other side. All these figures entrenched in the political wing of the Liberals are constantly using conservative elements like 2GB and [Sydney radio and TV broadcaster] Paul Murray to drive a conservative argument against him on same sex marriage, on climate change.

"That's in large part why we see a repeat today of the problems we saw when Kevin started to falter in 2009. Turnbull's own party doesn't want him to succeed as a commanding centrist figure. "And the parliament doesn't want him to succeed as a commanding centrist figure. Because the Labor party knows that they'll have a very, very big problem if Malcolm does manage to position the government at the political centre and start dragging progressive Labor thinkers into the Liberal camp." Leading on to the fourth: "Expectations were very high for both of them because they presented themselves as progressive, thoughtful, big-picture leaders" but, once in power, they find themselves constrained by their parties. "So the initial public enthusiasm is dispelled pretty quickly." Next is what Hawker calls the "defensive mechanism" deployed by Rudd and now Turnbull. "We now see Fortress Turnbull as we saw Fortress Rudd – a government largely run from the prime minister's personal office, in Malcolm's case apparently to the exclusion of the Treasurer.

"You bring people around you who think the same way you do, or who are not prepared to challenge you, and you drive the agenda through them. And you move on before an idea has been accepted by the public." This is the sixth, a characteristic that emerged starkly in Turnbull this week. The former prime minister and the current one share a propensity to throw out big ideas with the dizzying speed of the fast-spinning reels on a poker machine. "A lot of Kevin's policies were months and years in the making but because of his impatience" he would blurt them out to the public, fail to follow through and the policy would fail. "That's another trait that Malcolm has – he's doing things in a great rush and not explaining."

This week, for instance, "one day he was talking about income tax, the next day he was talking about health reform and the next day he was talking about schools. Things move too quickly for normal voters to follow." As for last week's great make or break issue – remember the Australian Building and Construction Commission, an institution so vital that Turnbull was prepared to call a double dissolution election to force it on a recalcitrant Senate? Voters who didn't know why it was such an urgent crisis for the country last week will have no better idea this week. The media dogs barked and Turnbull's caravan moved on, leaving a puzzled public wondering what it was all about. Or, as Hawker puts it, Turnbull is "putting out ideas faster than yesterday's garbage".

Normal people have busy lives with political news existing on the periphery, neither the time nor the resources to deeply absorb and analyse complex policies. "Neither Rudd nor Turnbull is prepared to go out city by city, station by station, region by region, patiently explaining their tax policy, or their health policy or their schools policy," says Hawker. "It's key to a successful government and something John Howard did very well." Hawker, correctly, thinks that it's too shallow and simplistic to blame this on the age of internet media. Prime ministers make choices: "These two are men with big brains, they have had the time to work it out, but they are hungry to get onto the next issue and too impatient to have to explain their rationale and take the people with them." Is this management matter overblown? Isn't it just a stylistic question? If the policy substance is sound, does the leader's management style really matter?

Absolutely. A bungled presentation is a bungled policy. Bad management destroys good ideas. And it can destroy governments. Rudd's idea for a tax on the super profits of the mining industry was, in theory, a sound idea. It was initially proposed by the mining industry itself. But the management of the idea was so disastrous that the policy was discredited and the debacle contributed to Rudd's destruction. As with Rudd's mining tax, so with Turnbull's income tax proposal this week. The concept of allowing the States to levy their own income taxes is, in theory, a fine idea that might be made to work. The Henry tax review, for instance, left the option open for governments to pursue. Instead, by bungling the management of the issue this week, the idea survived in the howling winds of public exposure for just three days.

Turnbull withdrew it on Friday in defeat, a potentially useful reform now discredited by poor handling. It will be years before it will be detoxified enough for a future prime minister to even look at it. This is a stunningly poor outcome for such a capable leader in such an early phase of his prime ministership. Bruce Hawker makes the point that the opposition can portray this sort of conduct as chaotic, just as it is in fact doing, "like the Rudd government, a thousand ideas, none implemented". "This is very dangerous territory for a government to get into." Hawker also points out some differences between Rudd and Turnbull. Their policies are different, their political philosophies are different. Hawker says it's inconceivable that Rudd would have considered ending federal funding for public schools, for instance.

Another difference is the speed with which their popularity dissolved. In Rudd's case it took two years before his government had lost it consistent polling advantage over the opposition. In Turnbull's, a mere six months. A final, defining difference? Rudd's prime ministership is history and Turnbull is still free to write his own future, though he becomes a little less free with each blunder. "He still has some months to present himself as a leader with a positive vision for the country, not someone flipping and flopping all over the place as he was this week," says Hawker. "Remember, as soon as Kevin started flipping and flopping over climate change it was pretty much all over for him. Malcolm could go the same way – he's promised so much, and delivered so little."

This is Bruce Hawker's cautionary tale for Turnbull's prime ministership. He speaks from bitter experience. Peter Hartcher is the political editor