As far back as 2011, Rudd set out a series of conditions for his return. It was clear he wanted to be vindicated and to prove the "faceless men" wrong; as foreign minister at the time, he wanted to underline his competence and success; he wanted to return to the leadership rather than launch a leadership challenge; he wanted Labor MPs to draft him as leader; he wanted guarantees he would not be undermined by his cabinet colleagues; and finally, based on the management of his support within the party and public appearances, he wanted to be Labor leader again only if there was a prospect of beating Abbott.
In 2011 these seemed like logical and reasonable political plans for an eventual return to the leadership to vindicate himself and restore Labor's fortunes.
The final point, that he would not take over unless he had a real prospect of winning, is the key to the failure of the rest.
Across time Rudd abandoned all these conditions because he became convinced he could win against Abbott.
Rudd lost his position as foreign minister as a result of his first hurried and failed challenge. That cost him the opportunity to demonstrate his competence in cabinet.
The process of building support after being thrashed by Gillard in the leadership ballot in March last year was slow and acrimonious. Whenever Rudd became leader again, he could not count on the confidence and support of senior colleagues, many of whom chose to resign rather than work with him. There was no seamless, competition-free drafting but a divisive, damaging series of feints and false starts that undermined Gillard and the Labor government Rudd was aiming to reclaim.
But the truly fatal shift was to fail to recognise that beyond a certain point a change of leadership back to Rudd could not make enough difference to restore trust in a divided and incompetent government.
Rudd's mistake was to believe that whenever he took over, he could carry the day. At the beginning of the campaign he believed his support in Queensland could lead to the recapture of five or six Coalition seats in that state, boosted by former premier Peter Beattie's candidacy in Forde; that it could offset losses elsewhere after holding in Tasmania; and that it could deliver Labor an unlikely but heroic victory.
The view was Rudd could turn it around with his handpicked team, headed by long-time Labor strategist Bruce Hawker, but it was self-delusion. Rudd only made things worse by concentrating on bringing down Gillard, instead of planning what to do when he got the rare chance of becoming Prime Minister for a second time.
