"Tony Abbott's use of a Washington Post interview to brand his Labor predecessors as ''wacko'' and ''embarrassing'' could set back his working relationship with the Obama adminstration, a leading US commentator says. Norman Ornstein, an author and political scientist with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said he ''winced'' when he read the interview in which Mr Abbott put the boot into the Rudd-Gillard government in unusually strong language for a foreign interview. ''It really does violate a basic principle of diplomacy to drag in your domestic politics when you go abroad,'' Dr Ornstein said. ''It certainly can't help in building a bond of any sort with President Obama to rip into a party, government and, at least implicitly leader, with whom Obama has worked so closely.
''Perhaps you can chalk it up to a rookie mistake. But it is a pretty big one.''
Former diplomat and senior public servant John Menadue said it remained to be seen whether Mr Abbott could ''make the transition from a critic in opposition and an attack dog to a responsible and constructive prime minister''"
