Not Dead Yet: A Response to Rachel Stewart’s Musings on Democracy.

The Falcon And The Falconer: Rachel Stewart today (3/5/17) took very public exception to my critique (reprinted below) of her column in last Wednesday's NZ Herald. Her unrelentingly ad hominem response (which, rather surprisingly for someone of Stewart's politics, mixes racism, sexism and ageism in equal measure) fails to address any of the criticisms levelled at her Death Notice for Democracy. I invite the readers of Bowalley Road to read all three documents and draw their own conclusions. [For those who are interested, here is the link to Professor Jack Vowles critique of Stewart's original column. - C.T.]

 

I’M A BIG FAN of Rachel Stewart’s writing. Her column in the NZ Herald has quickly become one of those “must-read” contributions to the national conversation. She’s to be admired for her courage, too. Anyone who takes on Big Dairy in this country knows exactly what to expect – and it usually arrives. This morning’s contribution, however, on the subject of democracy, was not one of her best.

 

Even when undertaken with the best of intentions (as I’m sure this particular column was) dissing democracy is never, ever, a good idea. It stands among the most extraordinary – and fragile – of human achievements. Its cost, in terms of human suffering, has been huge, and most of its victories have been tragically temporary. The historical default setting for state conduct is authoritarian (descending all-too-frequently into brutal tyranny). When it comes to political systems, democracies remain the precious exception – not the rule.

 

Which is not to say that the practice of democracy is always entirely edifying. It was the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who quipped that: “Laws are like sausages – it is best not to see them being made.”

 

That’s a sentiment with which Rachel clearly has some sympathy.

 

“If society feels less moral reverence to the democracy ideal, who can honestly blame them? Having listened to Clinton and Trump battle it out for a year before the unthinkable became real, I get it.”

 

Obviously, last year’s US presidential election still rankles. But it is always a mistake to confuse outcome with process. Rachel may have been disappointed that Bernie Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton, but to suggest that the Democratic Party “fiddled with the dials and switches to ensure Bernie Sanders never got the nod” is just plain wrong. Bernie lost because he got fewer votes than Hillary – pure and simple. He made the cardinal error of not competing hard and early in the American South – the very same mistake that cost Hillary the nomination back in 2008.

 

Rachel is also scornful of the US Electoral College’s contribution to democracy: “Then there’s Trump. Astonishingly elected, but by fewer than three million votes than his rival. Only in America. Land of the seriously deficient electoral system.”

 

Except, of course, the whole point of the Electoral College is to ensure that the rights of the smaller American states are not completely obliterated by the superior numbers of the larger ones. The United States is, after all, a federation. What benefit would the citizens of Wyoming or Rhode Island derive from belonging to the Union if they were forever being outvoted by the citizens of California, New York and Texas? If Hillary had spent less time in those three states and more time in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania she would now be the second President Clinton.

 

More worrying still, is Rachel’s evident lack of understanding of her own country’s democratic system.

 

“Here at home we find we're stuck with the lack-lustre Mr English as Prime Minister, and not of our choosing. He was the pre-ordained prefect left to us by Key when he exited stage right. Yeah, the Nats held an internal mock election but, that’s all it was. The appearance of democracy when you're not really having it.”

 

Umm, no, the Nats didn’t. Caucus elections frequently fail to come to an actual vote, for the very simple (and obvious) reason that if there’s one thing democratic politicians know how to do really, really well – it’s count. When a candidate realises that he or she doesn’t have the numbers to win, they simply withdraw from the race. Why stand if you’re certain to lose? There’s always next time!

 

And besides, under our Westminster System of parliamentary democracy, voters NEVER get to elect the Prime Minister. That job goes to the Member of Parliament who convinces the Governor-General that he or she commands a majority of the House of Representatives – the politicians we DO get to elect.

 

Political parties makes this job a great deal easier and ensure that the person who emerges as Prime Minister gets to remain in office for a sensible period of time. That’s why we have them. And if they often seem rather cautious and overly influenced by special interests, then there’s a very simple way to remedy that deficiency – become a member and turn them into something worth voting for!

 

Danyl Mclauchlan makes the case for practical, get-down-and-dirty politics much better than I ever could in his excellent review of Max Harris’s “The New Zealand Project”:

 

“Politics is technocratic because modern societies are complex: many things could be better, but almost everything could be much, much worse, and all the high-minded values in the world are worthless if you can’t keep the lights on. It is compromised because pluralism – the challenge of different groups in society holding different and conflicting but reasonable and valid views – is the central problem in politics, and cannot be fixed by re-educating everyone. Political reform should be cautious, because outcomes are uncertain and overconfidence bias is real, especially among groups of intelligent experts who reinforce each other’s assumptions – a dynamic that often leads to catastrophic failure despite the best of intentions.”

 

So, Rachel. Is democracy having a rough time at the moment? Yes, it is. But that only reinforces the need to get stuck in and organise it back into robust good health. Do money and backroom wheeling and dealing sully the search for “pro bono publico” – the public good? Of course they do – but not to anything like the extent you might expect. And even when they do get out of hand, and the plutocrats begin menacing the democrats: a corrupt democracy is always – always – better than a virtuous tyranny. (As Carrie Mathison discovers in the final episode of the sixth series of “Homeland”.)

 

Because, to quote the pithy summation of that old rogue Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 28 April 2017.

All That Glitters: James Shaw At The Ika Seafood Bar & Grill.

Is Not Gold: As a Green politician, Shaw is anything but staunch and conventional. His experience in the corporate world projects itself ahead of him like a force field. And, in a party chock full of small businessmen and women, it’s a force field they want him to use.

 

I WON’T SAY HE WAS BAD. That wouldn’t be fair at all. By any standards, James Shaw is an impressive politician. He’s just not as good as he seemed to be the day (30 May) he was elected the Greens’ Co-Leader. One of the reasons he looked so impressive that weekend was the quality of the keynote speech he delivered to the Greens AGM the day after his election. Writing for The Press, I characterised that address as containing: “some of the most impressive political rhetoric I have encountered in more than 30 years of writing about New Zealand politics.”

 

To say that I was disappointed to learn Shaw had not written the best lines of that speech would be an understatement. Foolishly, perhaps, I had allowed myself to believe that the Greens had voted themselves a leader of truly Churchillian virtuosity. Chatting to the man himself at the Ika Seafood Bar & Grill on Tuesday evening, however, it soon became clear that he belongs much more to the JFK than the Winston Churchill tradition. Kennedy had the remarkable Ted Sorensen as his speechwriter. Shaw is verbally equipped with the powerful prose of the scarcely less talented Danyl McLauchlan. It was McLauchlan who penned the following, truly memorable, lines of Shaw’s keynote speech:

 

“There is no name for this system. Nobody speaks for it. Nobody voted for it. It happens in the spaces between speeches and elections. It happens behind closed doors or over dinner with lobbyists. We have a political economy of friendly deals and whispers. Of overnight polling and focus groups.”

 

It is, of course, much to Shaw’s credit that he was able to recognise in the Wellington biologist, blogger and novelist a talent for political communication that was clearly guaranteed to enhance his career prospects. Shaw’s excellent maiden speech to Parliament had singled him out early as a person to watch. That McLauchlan had a major hand in drafting it, now strikes me as entirely unsurprising.

 

But if Shaw is savvy enough to have acquired one of the best political rhetoricians in the country, what about the rest of the political package? Does he come across as a leader who knows where the currents of twenty-first century culture are carrying political parties? And, is he ready to steer the Greens in that direction?

 

That he was elected by his fellow Greens on the first ballot, with 54 percent of the vote, strongly suggests that they think he does – and is. It has been clear (at least to me) that the Greens have, for some time, been growing increasingly irritated with their left-wing label. Since 2005, New Zealand’s overall political trajectory has been towards individualism, market-driven economic and social solutions, and an increasingly authoritarian state. Though many Greens have staunchly resisted these trends, a substantial number – probably a majority – have accommodated them. These rightward-floating Greens constitute Shaw’s political base: their expectations and his political future are inextricably linked.

 

What I found so curious about Shaw’s performance at Ika’s Tuesday “Salon” was his apparent reluctance to embrace these expectations. Now, it may simply have been a case of the wrong audience. The sort of people who turn up to Laila Harré’s restaurant are pretty much the left of the Left. That the Greens are about to embark on a journey to the Right is most emphatically NOT what they want to hear. If that is the explanation for his staunchly conventional presentation of the Rod Donald/Russel Norman version of Greenness, then I’m underwhelmed. As a Green politician, Shaw is anything but staunch and conventional. His experience in the corporate world projects itself ahead of him like a force field. And, in a party chock full of small businessmen and women, it’s a force field they want him to use. I would have been much more impressed if Shaw had used his hour upon the stage to challenge the assumptions of his largely “Old Left” audience.

 

Because the brutal political reality confronting the Greens is that the party’s residual collectivism is radically out of step with the young, tertiary-educated professionals who constitute the Greens’ electoral base. These voters do not want to be told that the market-driven system that employs them is fundamentally incompatible with planetary safety. They want to vote for Green Capitalism – not Red-Green Socialism. Even the trend towards increasingly authoritarian government and the National Security State may be turned to a Green purpose. After all, the sort of measures required to combat climate change will only be implemented with effect by a strong state that brooks no opposition.

 

Shaw shied away from my suggestion that he may soon find himself being courted by a John Key as eager to woo Green voters as he had once been to draw former Labour voters into National’s ranks. But if all goes well at Paris at the end of this year, and National finds itself obliged to take climate change seriously, then a new relationship with the Greens is inevitable. It is then that the people who voted for him will expect something much more radical than staunchness and conventionality from their champion.

 

Were I James Shaw, I would be asking Danyl McLauchlan to begin working on the speech immediately.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 2 July 2015.