Does personality Trump policy?
Not surprisingly, a fair bit of the discussion in the immediate aftermath of John Key’s announcement he was resigning as prime minister focused on his apparently impregnable popularity.
Key, in both his personal and professional capacity, had navigated choppy waters in the last couple of years, while his party has also gone through some uncomfortable patches, most notably in relation to rising rates of homelessness.
Yet his popularity had remained persistently high. Even in May, when his preferred prime minister rating dropped to its lowest point in his eight years in office, at 36.7 per cent, it was still three times better than Winston Peters and four times the rating of opposition leader Andrew Little.
So now Teflon John is gone, are we on the verge of finding out something rather revealing about our parliamentary politics? Put another way, are we about to find out whether our politics is more about personality than party and policy?
Of course, we’ve just seen one of the clearest examples in history of how a strong personality can overcome a paucity of coherent policy in an election. Leaving aside the rise of fake news, and the fact that Donald Trump didn’t win the popular vote in the US presidential race, his victory was one that revolved chiefly around his personality. Not many people would have the confidence to spout the controversial concoction of ideas that passed for policy he did, and then defend it, but it was no problem for the former host of The Apprentice.
No-one’s drawing any serious parallels between Key and Trump, but there’s no doubt confidence is a commodity that has helped to keep the former at the forefront, to face down issues that might have proved insurmountable obstacles to leaders less sure of themselves. It’s a quality that unquestionably played a role in keeping his predecessor, Helen Clark, at the helm for three terms. Yes, National setting course in a Labourlite direction under Key’s leadership played a role, but it took a leader who could match Clark’s confidence and self-assurance to unseat her.
How many times in subsequent elections have we heard people say not that they voted for National, but that they voted for Key?
Labour has yet to find a leader comparable with Clark since, and there’s no obvious candidate to fill the Key hole among the potential contenders for the National leadership. Judith Collins is the strongest personality, but the caucus might take more convincing than the Right-leaning Don Brash that she’s the right fit.
Perhaps then, the 2017 general election looms as one to be fought more on policy than personality, unless someone can pull a charismatic rabbit from the party hat.