rat's aspiration

After I posted this at Surfdom just now, I switched on Lateline in time to see a neatly-combed and scrubbed John Howard vowing he would stay on and win.
What option does he have--publicly wring his hands in anguish? Say, "But how could this be happening? I have the ear of the Australian people!" Of course he will act concerned, but confident. Alert, but not alarmed. He needs to try to harness the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy, after all--fake it til you make it. Naturally he's also trying to trade off the fact that Australians respect tenacity. That may be so, but I doubt the laundry list of complaints that voters have will just magically evaporate.
And the pressure's on, if Glenn Milne is to be believed (Sunday Telegraph, 9/9/07, not apparently available online). He invokes the spectre of the mysterious 'unaligned ministers' who have apparently given Howard a deadline of mere days to shape up or ship out....