It could be said that costello played it perfectly.
Play the disgruntled but still fiercely loyal second in command and let Howard take the risk and responsibility for a lost election.
The odds of winning were not so good in any case after so many years in power, if only due to voter fatigue. Of course the incredibly biased media campaign didn't help the liberal's chances.
When you throw in the incredible amount of money the unions spent to create a quite effective scare campaign, essentially running their own parallel but separate election campaign along side of but designed to complement the labor election campaign, then it is not hard to see why we have this result.
The liberals were one side fighting three enemies: - the obviously arranged negative media campaign, - the massively expensive union scare campaign - the labor election campaign while trying to keep the government functioning on a daily basis.
Seems like three against one, and the three have nothing else to do on a daily basis except plan and run their campaigns, while the one (liberals) have a full time job of running the country.
Anyway, as I see it costello comes off as the good guy loyal to the end with very little responsibility for the election loss.
He is at his most marketable right now. He can probably secure a multi-year commercial contract worth millions each year and let the party rebuild over the next few years and then decide if he wants to get back in.
