Thursday 24 September 2020

Going High, Going Low: An Assessment Of The First Leaders' Debate.

Uncrushed: Jacinda Ardern knew exactly what was expected of her in the first Leaders' Debate. Labour’s dominant position, three weeks out from the general election, is constructed out of the admiration and gratitude of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who, more often than not, vote National.  Nothing she said or did in the debate could be allowed to undermine her hard-won reputation for calmness, confidence and empathy. Nor did it.

THE PEOPLE who awarded the first Leaders Debate to Judith Collins are the people we learned to loathe during Lockdown. They’ve learned nothing from the public’s negative reaction to arrogance and aggression in the Time of Covid. Poor Simon Bridges paid the ultimate political price for lapses much less damaging than Judith Collins’ on Tuesday Night. But, fear not, Collins, too, will pay a price for her arrogance and aggression.

Jacinda Ardern, on the other hand, knew exactly what was expected of her in this encounter. Labour’s dominant position, three weeks out from the general election, is constructed out of the admiration and gratitude of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who, more often than not, vote National. Her calm demeanour at the helm, as she steered her country through the early stages of the global Covid-19 pandemic, was complemented by her ability to project an almost joyful confidence in the steadfastness and solidarity of her fellow New Zealanders. Nothing she said or did in Tuesday’s debate could be allowed to undermine that precious combination of calm and confidence. Nor did it.

Astonishingly, most political journalists and commentators still don’t get this. Like the snarling pack of newshounds who earned the instant (and likely permanent) dislike of those New Zealanders who tuned-in to the 1:00pm media briefings during Lockdown, these others regard arrogance and aggression as indispensable tools of the journalistic trade. People who are offended by their use are, in their professional opinion, naïve. They simply don’t understand how the news business works.

In the electronic media especially, broadcasters are expected to deliver performances overbrimming with confidence and energy. Like their colleagues in the print media, they have been trained to communicate with an audience whose average reading age is said to be twelve. But, as George Orwell makes clear in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the ruthless simplification of language leads swiftly and inevitably to the equally ruthless simplification of thought – the Holy Grail of totalitarian regimes everywhere. Simplicity in communication is a virtue, but sadly, the contemporary news media is increasingly prone to confuse simplicity with simple-mindedness.

So it was that while most New Zealanders responded positively to their Prime Minister’s clear command of the complex issues with which her government has had to grapple, the academics who train and educate the young people who emerge from our universities as professional “communicators” saw only someone who spoke to her fellow citizens as if they were seated around the cabinet table. Quelle horreur! In a democracy – a system of government which confers key decision-making powers upon the people themselves – a prime minister addressed her fellow citizens as, of all things, decision-makers!

How much more effective, according to these academics, were the tactics of the Leader of the Opposition who barked and snapped at her opponent like a demented terrier and addressed the watching voters as if they were intermediate school-children. With her arched eyebrows and curled lips; snorts and guffaws; puerile interjections and belligerent playground taunts; Judith Collins was held up as the possessor of all the theatrical and rhetorical gifts required of a modern (or should that be post-modern?) political leader. For declining to get down in the gutter with Collins; and for refusing to treat politics as a blood-sport; the loser of the first Leaders Debate was declared, by these erudite instructors of tomorrow’s journalists, to be the Prime Minister.

Most of the journalists in the Parliamentary Press Gallery concurred. Jacinda Ardern, they opined, lacked energy. Why was she so passive? Where were the zingers to match her magnificent put-down of Mike Hosking earlier in the day? Why didn’t this “superb communicator” not bark and snap at her opponent as expected? The clear consensus among the political scribes was that when the Prime Minister next went head-to-head with Judith Collins, she would have to lift her game.

Even among Jacinda’s supporters on the Left there were pockets of disappointment. Why didn’t she crush the crusher? Why didn’t she, figuratively, slash off the Tory champion’s head and hold it aloft, Game of Thrones-style, for her followers to revile? Why, when Collins offensively implied that people on the minimum wage were so much less consequential than school-teachers and small business owners, did she not condemn her appalling class prejudice? Why didn’t she call New Zealand’s dirty dairy farmers – dirty dairy farmers? Why all the boring centrism? Dammit Jacinda, you’re the leader of the Labour Party – would it kill you to act like it!

Yes, quite probably, it would. No matter how hard they might wish it were otherwise. And no matter how obdurately some leftists insist that the voters are only waiting for the word “To overturn the cities and the rivers/And split the house like a rotten totara log” [James K. Baxter] New Zealanders have never been insurrectionists. We are socialist renovators – not revolutionaries. Middle-class New Zealanders, the people Jacinda has to thank for being at 48 percent in the Colmar Brunton poll (and not 25 percent, like the hapless David Cunliffe) need to be persuaded to back Labour in a programme of non-terrifying change.

That’s why one of the most effective political statements of the whole evening came in response to John Campbell’s challenge to the Prime Minister over the Capital Gains Tax. “At some point, John,” Jacinda explained, acknowledging Labour’s three failed attempts to sell a CGT to the electorate, “you have to accept that voters don’t agree with you.” From those few, and yes, simple words, former National voters would have drawn reassurance that their ballots may be safely cast for Labour in 2020. They are not in the market for a “crusher”, but for a leader to construct the sort of “new normal” in which they and their families can feel comfortable and secure.

By presenting herself as that sort of political leader: calm, considered, compassionate and constructive; Jacinda Ardern held her middle-class supporters in place – and won the debate.


This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 24 September 2020.

15 comments:

Jens Meder said...

Yes Chris - in your last sentence, you are right.
It is - or should be - common knowledge now, that freely consumable tax reductions lead towards more plutocratic capitalism (i.e. the rich getting richer without necessarily raising the have-nots into haves) -

whereas saving into the NZ Super Fund and KiwiSaving is democratic capitalism very close to its absolute best - 100% of citizen participation not only in the collective level of it through the NZ Super Fund, but also on the personal level at least through KiwiSaver for a start -

easily introduced through granting the $1000.- KiwiSavwe kick-start unconditionally to all those who missed out receiving it - from "cradle to grave" -

in form of a $1000.- KiwiSaver account with the NZ Super Fund, at the expense of the money 100% of us have contributed to - and earned already - with the NZSF.

greywarbler said...

Add the 4 C's - calm, considered, compassionate and constructive;
add another 'R'Reasoning to the present three in education - Reading, (W)Riting and (A)Rithmetic; as well as learning to use computers and all tech skills but with physical adeptness at manually making things, with a bit of discussion by young people about philosophy, how to maintain personal integrity and cope with bullying, how to understand their own and others primal urging for self-direction and domination, their wishes for their future and how the world could be, how the sexes relate, and how to meld the atavistic and the protean so the young aren't being driven by mishandled urges - we would have the sort of citizens that PM Ardern is modelling for us.

Tom Hunter said...

I didn't watch the debate, nor will I watch others. In fact I very rarely listen to or watch any politician nowadays, though I sometimes read their prepared speeches. I judge on actions.

But having said that I must take issue with a few of your points that seem incoherent:

Like the snarling pack of newshounds who earned the instant (and likely permanent) dislike of those New Zealanders who tuned-in to the 1:00pm media briefings during Lockdown, these others regard arrogance and aggression as indispensable tools of the journalistic trade.

What? They seemed to love all those characteristics of the newshounds when the targets were Cunnilffe, Shearer, Little, Bridges and Muller. This sounds an awful lot like the twisted love of John key, who similarly rose above (and occasionally crushed) the same media plying the same tactics.

But, as George Orwell makes clear in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the ruthless simplification of language leads swiftly and inevitably to the equally ruthless simplification of thought
Orwell was also renowned and celebrated for using simple langauge, as described by historian Simon Schamer in his History of Britain episode on The Two Winstons:
Orwell, we knew, cared deeply for history, but not of pomp - it was the history of people, written not in purple rhapsodies, but Orwell's English - sharp and hard as granite.
...
Tending to his goats and chickens at his cold cottage in Hertfordshire, fighting off the early signs of TB, he set about purging the language of the pompous preaching of the official left and the nauseous sentimentality of the romantic right


In Nineteen Eighty Four, Orwell was not attacking the simplification of langauge but the inversion of meaning and its use to silence people rather than communicate.

...the academics who train and educate the young people who emerge from our universities as professional “communicators” saw only someone who spoke to her fellow citizens...
I'm fairly sure it was exactly these sort of academics who enabled Jacinda Adern to gain her Bachelors Degree in ... "communications".

... a prime minister addressed her fellow citizens as, of all things, decision-makers!
Nothing shows me I'm a decision-maker about my own life more than having a prime Minister telling me not to travel anywhere far from my house, combined with the threat from her Commissioner of Police about what will happen to me should I do so.

Yes, I've felt truly empowered by all the lockdown controls of the last six months. It has been a triumph of individual decision making over mass obedience.

The Veteran said...

Chris ... explaining is losing and you spent lotsa time explaining why Ardern, away from her adoring groupies (and we won't talk about the social distancing lapse) looked uncomfortable when forced to defend her record (or lack thereof).

The country needs/deserves more than a sunny disposition and platitudes. With Ardern all that's on offer is borrow and hope and borrow some more.

Her put down of the farming sector sez it all and reminds one of Michael Cullen's maiden speech all those years ago.

Kat said...

Are we not so tired of gamesmanship, we have the most elevated PM in a generation, and for good reason. A global phenomenon. Jacinda Ardern is highly regarded and respected world wide. She transcends party politics, she is, at her roots the real New Zealander. She is destined to be the greatest Prime Minister this country has seen seen since Michael Joseph Savage. We should also be proud of her parents Ross and Laurell for producing, nurturing and raising such an incredible human being.

Trev1 said...

Golly, I found the debate both illuminating and scary at the same time. Illuminating because I realized, and I suspect many others did too, just how poorly equipped Ardern is to continue leading the country into the post-COVID rebuild. Anyone who thinks school lunch programmes, waterway working bees and endless wage hikes by government edict is going to save the economy is barking. Scary, because I also realised that without a carefully prepared script or her ventriloquist controller Robbo at hand Ardern is completely at sea and can only mouth undergraduate slogans and feel-good generalities.

Unknown said...

Such an excellent piece.Thank you.

Geoff Fischer said...

Jacinda Ardern: “At some point, John,you have to accept that voters don’t agree with you.”
That says it all. It says why Labour gave up on a capital gains tax. It also says why Labour cannot do anything substantial to abate climate change, poverty, or homelessness.
It tells us why the Labour Party, and the present political system in its entirety, can not be the agent of progressive change.
Politicians are still referred to as "leaders" but they no longer lead. They can not even persuade. If Jacinda Ardern, Waikato University's finest exponent of communications and public relations, cannot persuade the nation of the merit of a capital gains tax, then who can?
More tellingly, Jacinda did not seriously try. She knew before she started that it would be a long and bruising struggle for which she had no appetite. This is the woman who worked for Tony Blair because she "needed a job". The self-declared "pragmatic idealist" whose pragmatism is all too apparent, and whose ideals are all too difficult to pin down.
Politicians can at best only respond to the perceived and advanced interests of their stakeholders, which includes not only "the voters" but also political party funders, agencies of state and foreign powers.
Despite occasional appearances to the contrary they do not respond to actual material events or objective circumstances.
Jacinda was able to mount an effective response to Covid-19 because the population of New Zealand were ready and willing to respond on their own account and in similar fashion.
Her appeal is strongest to those who have given up all hope for the future and look for nothing more than a beautiful death. She is the sedative with which the left has chosen to end its political life. RIP.

Andrew Nichols said...

Her appeal is strongest to those who have given up all hope for the future and look for nothing more than a beautiful death. She is the sedative with which the left has chosen to end its political life. RIP.

Marvellous. I've always wished I could express it as well as you Geoff.

oneblokesview said...

I always smile when I read syncophantic statements that Adern "saved us" from Covid.
Of course there was no alternative presented.
If anyone thinks that a National party would have done much different is obviously not versed in the way of governments.

I was a little dissapointed in your unkindled blind worshipping of Arderna and the debate.
Sorry Chris, but you can do much better than synophantic soliliquy.

I look forward to more balanced and thoughtful pieces in the future. I know you can do it as I have read some great articles under your pen.

Jens Meder said...

Regardless of the leaders debate, for the long term benefit of the country's and most of its citizens' future, National remains non-electable with a policy of freely consumable tax reductions at the expense of even more than just stopping taxation revenue financed wealth ownership creative contributions to the NZ Super Fund - and openly preferring plutocratic capitalism to people's capitalism.

sumsuch said...

I just said to my now, after 40 years, very crazed, evangelical relative I was eternally connected to the ever-losing cause of the Welfare State in which we both grew up. At this stage of politics-following, mostly by way of transistor radio where only AM could be picked up and National Radio was the only rational station, I'm a blind mole who travels by magnetic signals rather than watching TV debates.

The problem is so few NZers follow politics like us these days, compared to the 70s.

Isn't it great to have our own wee country to decide our things? Does anyone who knows regret us not joining Oz?

DavidW99 said...

Whatever you are on Chris, I want some - no - I want lots.

MaidinNZ said...

An integral, dignified & positive delivery ..

or ..

A bullying, face pulling, negative display ..
not how any of us would want our children to behave like & certainly not a leader ..

With what attitude do you truly want to be represented by?

National have a huge attitudinal shift to make if they want to be relevant in the 21st century.
Old time, playing the man, not the ball behaviour, doesn't impress the new voters, who are our future.

Mark Craig said...

All of your corespondents make pertinent points sir,but if I could just remind them of the most powerful mxim ,maybe of all time .Politics is the art of the possible .