By ABC's Jonathan Green

Photo: In this poll, the voters are treated to the spectacle of a truly personalised contest. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

The federal election has now become a test of the thin strength of charisma against the slower appeal of calculation and reserve, writes Jonathan Green.

To say that Australian politics has become presidential is a pretty tired truism, an idea probably showing the first signs of fatigue when Gough Whitlam was hoisted like a redeemer to the prime ministership in 1972, or when, not so long ago, more than half the country got its T-shirt on for Kevin 07.

We have long been used to voting for the leader as much as the team, the personality as much as the policies.

You could make a pretty convincing argument that it is just rival personality and delivery that masks the great uniformity of the Australian political landscape: two major parties of the near centre, neither offering substantial changes to a mutually agreed status quo while furiously resisting any hint of bipartisan agreement.

But that said, there has rarely been a period like the past three years, a term in which leadership has been the dominating business of politics, an issue that has coloured almost everything our parliamentarians have done; three years in which the business of the Australian government was repeatedly subverted by the unfinished business of the Australian Labor Party.

And emerging from all of that has been the ultimately victorious figure of Kevin Rudd, returned to the prime ministership after three years in which he made that cause his own personal quest and, through the unstinting influence of his ambition, co-opted the processes of government to his cause, forcing Julia Gillard to a constant position of cautious defence, all policy and political behaviour tested against its impact on internal numbers and support.

In the end he wore his party down, appealed to his colleagues' political vanity and sense of self-preservation and entitlement. It was a highly personal victory, and not one for higher political principle.

It's clear Rudd never accepted his party's verdict in 2010, when a spill vote was never held because the numbers were so overwhelmingly against him. But why would he? From his behaviour you could reasonably conclude that Rudd views his Prime Ministership as the presidential gift of the Australian people, bestowed by their collective vote in 2007 and not the ALP's to take away.

Rudd's approach is far removed from the traditional Australian notion of political leader as servant of party. Remember the constant repetition from John Howard when challenged on his hold on the Liberal leadership, that he would remain prime minister so long as it was his party's determination that he lead it. Old school.

And despite the slow infiltration of personality, our political leaders have always been an expression of a broader reality, a structure, an ideological base, the leader was the leader but he or she was a beholden creation of their party's will.

But now in this campaign the focus seems to have narrowed. We ought not underestimate what Rudd has done: in trumping the traditional authority of the ALP caucus with his broader popularity, he has ensured this presidential progress now unfolding.

It has made Kevin Rudd the very centre, the almost solitary focus of this ALP campaign, in a way that is unfamiliarly personal. This Labor campaign is an effort that will live or die with him, that will be propelled by his stamina, that will falter and fail on his efforts alone.

And that calculation will not be made on his capacity to convey policy detail or sell an ideological vision, but rather on the simple crude fact of his popular appeal ... or its lack.

That's why he's there.

Rudd's second coming is a strange bargain for that same party machine that sought to reclaim its authority through the installation of Gillard in 2010, an attempt lost eventually through political dysfunction and Rudd's self-assured tenacity.

Bringing him back ... that's either a risky or a desperate calculation. Maybe a bit of both.

The ALP has made a bargain with Rudd, a bargain in which it trades almost everything to gain the benefit of his popular approval. There's a moral dimension too, of course, to the rewarding of a man whose past three years have been a story of coldly calculated white-anting. It's a strangely backhanded pact, rewarding the prime cause of Labor's political malaise because only he could provide a quick and popular cure.

The party has invested in the pre-eminence of his leadership, it has given Rudd, much as he now claims to have learned the lessons of inclusivity, carte blanche. It's hard not to see a shift in the party's sense of moral self in this, that anything is permissible in the cause of winning, that all principals can be bargained for advantage.

And it has made the ALP case to the electorate a presidential case.

In this poll, the voters are treated to the spectacle of a truly personalised contest, and one that is therefore strangely lopsided: a race between the charismatic populist and an opponent so cautious, of such repressed personality that he is somewhere close to introversion.

This is a reality that is almost an inversion of the spun perception of the contenders in this race: of Abbott as policy eunuch and Rudd as policy wonk.

In truth it is more a test of the thin strength of charisma against the slower appeal of calculation and reserve.

An interesting contest indeed.

Jonathan Green is the presenter of Sunday Extra on Radio National and a former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.

A presidential battle: charisma versus reserve - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)