Jami-Lee Ross Lets It All Hang Out. Simon Bridges Stonewalls.

Making Him Deny It: Dramatic allegations, of the sort leveled against Simon Bridges by Jamie Lee Ross, are intended to force the targeted person onto the defensive. Requiring one’s opponents to deny the accusations leveled against them, all-too-often produces the paradoxical effect of rendering those accusations more – not less – believable.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, on 17 November 1973, declared to a gathering of newspaper editors: “I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.” This infelicitous sentence would, of course, come back to haunt Nixon as the Watergate scandal that brought down his presidency ground remorselessly on.

Hearing Simon Bridges solemnly reassure the Parliamentary Press Gallery: “I have done nothing wrong”, couldn’t help but remind me of Nixon’s exculpatory performance. Not, I hasten to add, because I believe the Leader of the Opposition to be guilty of the charges leveled against him by his former colleague, Jami-Lee Ross, but because it’s in the nature of such allegations to force the targeted person onto the defensive. Requiring one’s opponents to deny the accusations leveled against them, all-too-often produces the paradoxical effect of rendering those accusations more – not less – believable.

In terms of political theatre, the initial performances of Jami-Lee Ross and Simon Bridges offered some telling contrasts.

As befitted a man with very little left to lose, Ross spoke clearly and compellingly and answered the assembled journalists’ questions with impressive composure and a minimum of prevarication. To borrow once again from the Watergate lexicon, he opted for the “let it all hang-out” approach – openly divulging information which, in the normal course of political events, is kept under wraps.

Bridges’ performance was nowhere near as open, or impressive, as Ross’. Over and over again he declared his former colleague’s accusations to be “baseless”. Over and over again, he referred to Ross as a “liar”, a “leaker” and a “lone wolf” guilty of “appalling behaviour”. What he refused to do, however, was respond in detail to the charges of corrupt electoral practice and political blackmail which Ross had leveled against him.

During Watergate, a refusal to respond expansively to journalists’ direct questions was termed “stonewalling”. It is not a good look. I was disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition did not opt to match Ross’ earlier demonstration of candour. Laying to rest “baseless” charges surely requires nothing more than a frank description of what happened and why. In the United Kingdom, persons charged with an offense are cautioned that “it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court.” These are wise words, which politicians facing judgement in the Court of Public Opinion would do well to remember.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Simon Bridges and his caucus will be able to “draw a line under Jami-Lee Ross” and “move on”. I suspect the future of the National Party and its leader will turn upon the quality of the “evidence” (a recorded telephone conversation) which Ross promised on Tuesday to place in the hands of the Police. Much, too, will hinge on whether Ross’ allegation that he was threatened with false accusations of sexual harassment (a threat which, he claims, caused him to experience a mental breakdown) can be verified.

If fire is detected among all this smoke, then National faces a grim future. Having voted unanimously to expel Ross from their caucus, National’s 55 remaining MPs have voluntarily roped themselves to their precariously positioned leader. If he falls, they are all at grave risk of falling with him.

Reverting, once again, to the language of Watergate: if Ross is in possession of a “smoking gun” capable of bringing down Bridges; and if his caucus refuses to cut through the rope binding them to his fate; then the possibility opens up for Ross to run for re-election in Botany not as an independent (his current intention) but as the harbinger of a new and uncorrupted conservative movement.

Paradoxically, such an eventuality might ultimately rebound to the National Party’s electoral advantage. A new conservative party, located to National’s right on the political spectrum, would be ideally positioned to supply New Zealand’s dominant right-wing party with what it so sorely lacks at the present moment: a natural coalition partner.

The problem, to date, has been how to set up such a party without the voters dismissing it as a mere National Party contrivance. Well, problem solved. Whatever else may be said about the enmity between Bridges and Ross – it certainly isn’t contrived.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 October 2018.

The Limits Of Journalism.

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Raising Nixon's Ghost.

Political Pathology: Once again, the United States risks falling under the spell of a man pathologically incapable of quarantining his own disreputable impulses from the immense powers of the supreme political office he is seeking.

 

IN THE FINAL, desperate days of the Nixon Administration, a crucial instruction was communicated to the commanders of military bases in or near the American capital. Any  presidential order pertaining to the disposition of units under their command should be obeyed only if it was countersigned by James Schlesinger, the Secretary of Defence.

 

That was how seriously the situation had deteriorated in the early months of 1974. Senior figures in the government of the United States were taking grim precautions against the possibility that Richard Nixon, acting in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, might attempt to forestall his imminent impeachment by ordering tanks onto the streets of Washington DC.

 

Why was the prospect of such an unprecedented abuse of presidential power considered plausible? The answer lies in what came to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre”.

 

On Saturday, 20 October 1973, President Nixon ordered his Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to sack Archibald Cox, the Independent Special Prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department to investigate the Watergate scandal. Cox’s investigation had advanced perilously close to the Oval Office and Nixon wanted him gone.

 

Richardson refused to obey the President’s order and immediately tended his resignation. Upon being given the same instruction, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, William Ruckelhaus, also refused and resigned. Undaunted, Nixon ordered the Solicitor General of the United States, Robert Bork, brought to the White House. After swearing-in Bork as his new Attorney General, Nixon immediately ordered him to sack Cox. With considerable reluctance, Bork complied.

 

It was the Saturday Night Massacre that finally drove American public opinion towards impeachment. The President’s evident contempt for the US Constitution and the Rule of Law made the Watergate accusations all-too-believable. The events of 20 October also caused a number of senior White House officials and Cabinet members to wonder just how far Nixon would be prepared to go to avoid impeachment, arraignment, almost certain conviction, and, quite possibly, incarceration.

 

For students of American history these forty-year-old events have been pulled into sharp focus by Donald Trump’s threat to put Hillary Clinton in jail. Routinely castigating his opponent as “Crooked Hillary”, Trump used the occasion of last Sunday’s Second Presidential Debate to inform his opponent that: “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.” When Clinton responded: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” Trump shot back: “Because you’d be in jail.”

 

This is a chillingly Nixonian exchange. Once again, the United States risks falling under the spell of a man pathologically incapable of quarantining his own disreputable impulses from the immense powers of the supreme political office he is seeking.

 

The attempt to establish an “imperial presidency”, began in 1937 with Franklin Roosevelt’s unsuccessful bid to pack the Supreme Court. By the end of the 1960s, it was threatening to turn the American Constitution into a museum piece.

 

The Watergate scandal and Nixon’s downfall had vindicated the Founding Fathers’ commitment to the doctrine of the  “separation of powers”. Under the US Constitution, a President Trump has no more right to hire a special prosecutor than President Nixon had to fire one. In a democracy, presidents don’t put people in jail, courts do – and only after the accused has been found guilty, at a fair trial, according to law.

 

Unfortunately, two generations of Americans have grown to maturity since the Saturday Night Massacre, and the lessons of Watergate are only now recalled by ageing Baby Boomers.

 

But if the “great silent majority” that re-elected Nixon in 1972 were voting for a strong leader to quell the waning “youth revolt” and restore “law and order” (i.e. repress African-Americans) the ambitions of the marginalised white males currently cheering-on Donald Trump are much more perilous.

 

What Trump’s supporters want is an America purged of all the social gains achieved by blacks, women and gays since the 1960s. An America ready to wall-up Latino immigrants below the Rio Grande. An America in which Muslims are neither seen nor heard.

 

This is the America they bellow for so raucously whenever their putative Emperor/President promises to “Make America Great Again”.

 

And because Hillary Clinton is standing in his way: “Lock her up!”

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 14 October 2016.

A Not-So-Foreign Country

The Shadow Of The Past: The only positive aspect of Watergate was the way in which the venerable US Constitution was able to defuse what could have exploded into a full-blown “legitimation crisis”. Is New Zealand’s unwritten and historically untested constitution capable of rising to the challenge of this present political scandal as effectively as America’s rose to the challenge of Watergate? Can the Prime Minister and his Cabinet be relied upon to pass judgement on themselves?

 

I’M WRITING THIS COLUMN on the fortieth anniversary of Norman Kirk’s death. As someone who cast his first vote in 1975, it is tempting to eulogise the New Zealand of forty years ago and to compare it, favourably, with the scandal-ridden country of today. Certainly “Big Norm” was an extraordinary political leader against whom very few – if any – of today’s politicians could hope to measure up. One has only to watch his 1973 interview with David Frost (available online at NZ On Screen) to realise just how much the New Zealand electorate once demanded of their prime ministers.
 

We must, however, be cautious, and not only because, as L.P. Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
 

Beset as we are with a rapidly spreading and intensifying political scandal, we would do well to bear in mind that although the New Zealand of forty years ago was very different from the New Zealand of today, it was also, in “dirty politics” terms, surprisingly similar. Hartley’s caution notwithstanding, they did many things the same.
 

Forty years ago, far from being the preferred weapon of the Left (as today’s Prime Minister, John Key, alleges) the political smear campaign was the speciality of the Right. When the newspaper Truth (the Whaleoil blog of its day) published a front-page story alleging Kirk’s involvement in a sinister plot to socialise the New Zealand economy, it was written in exactly the same belligerent style as Cameron Slater’s postings.

Another instantly recognisable aspect of “dirty politics” 1970s-style was the Security Intelligence Service’s leaking of sensitive information to right-wing editors and journalists. Then, as now, they needed no further instruction on how to put such material to good use.

Most of all, however, the period leading up to and following Kirk’s death was characterised by a sense of powerful yet unidentified forces moving unobserved behind the scenes. A very similar characterisation of the political zeitgeist was one of the most memorable parts of Nicky Hager’s speech to a packed hall of interested Aucklanders last Wednesday. In explaining his reasons for writing Dirty Politics he referenced exactly the same feeling of unease about the way politics was being conducted; the same conviction that apparently isolated political events were, in some unrevealed and sinister way, connected.
 

The anxieties of the “screaming left-wing conspiracy theorists” of the mid-1970s concerning the malignant political machinations of the “Kirk Years” were eventually proved right. Fortunately, Hager has not had to wait forty years to have his worst fears confirmed. Thanks to the intervention of a “White Hat” hacker known as Rawshark, New Zealand’s foremost investigative journalist has been able to demonstrate that the dark arts of attack politics are being applied in 2014 with no less devastating effect than in 1974-75.
 

The unfolding revelations, in which so much of the action has been concentrated in the offices of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice, have inevitably invited comparisons with the Watergate Scandal. That story also reached its crescendo in August 1974 when, for the first and only time in US history, a serving President was forced to resign his office.
 

It is worth recalling, given the proximity of our own General Election, that the exposure of the Watergate burglary in June 1972 had no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the Presidential Election held in November of that year. Indeed, President Richard Nixon was emphatically re-elected – winning 49 of the USA’s 50 states. The slow unravelling of the scandal and its subsequent cover-up did, however, transform Nixon’s second term into a political and constitutional nightmare. As a result his administration was effectively paralysed and the USA gravely weakened.
 

The only positive aspect of Watergate was the way in which the venerable US Constitution was able to defuse what could have exploded into a full-blown “legitimation crisis”.
 

Democracies, much more than other political systems, depend upon their citizens’ belief that the people they elect to public office are decent, conscientious and law-abiding. If high ethical standards are not maintained; if citizens become convinced that their elected representatives are engaged in large-scale and largely unreproved corruption; then the legitimacy of both the government and the state is called into question.
 

Is New Zealand’s unwritten and historically untested constitution capable of rising to the challenge of this present political scandal as effectively as America’s rose to the challenge of Watergate? Can the Prime Minister and his Cabinet be relied upon to pass judgement on themselves?
 

Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974. Norman Kirk died 22 days later on 31 August. That’s when it began: forty  years ago; that’s when the poisons currently disfiguring our body politic first entered the nation’s bloodstream.
 

In the polling booths on 20 September can we purge ourselves of those poisons? Will we vote to impeach?
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 2 September 2014.