Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid... Then vote for me.

This is the message being drummed home repeatedly by the conservative governments in both Australia and the USA. And it's working.

Be afraid of terrorists. Be afraid of the opposition, whose policies are not clear and whose abilities are unproven. Be afraid of minority parties with secret agendas. Be afraid of foreigners. Be afraid of protesters. Be afraid of the big bad world.

But don't be afraid of me.

As Bush said this week, "You may not always agree with me, but you know what I stand for."

That's the guts of Bush's message. John Howard's campaign is running on similar lines.

It's very hard to campaign against Fear, just as it is hard to overcome one's own fears. Firstly, you have to analyze exactly what is causing the fear. And the answer is almost always the same: people are mostly afraid of the UNKNOWN.

In the USA, John Kerry's campaign (believing the conventional wisdom that this election is a "referendum on Bush") has been trying to bear-hug Bush on policy issues. Kerry even went so far as to say that - even knowing what he knows today about WMDs etc - he would still have voted for the invasion of Iraq.

It's a policy that doesn't seem to be working: given no visible difference between the candidates, in a climate of fear, many people will just follow the Bush message and stick with the devil they know.

In Australia, Mark Latham has been more successful in distancing himself from PM John Howard on a range of issues, including the keystone issue of Iraq. While this leaves Latham open to attack, it also differentiates him from Howard and gives voters the impression of a clear choice.

At this stage, a Latham government seems less of an Unknown than a Kerry government.