Ardern perfects art of illusion
Steve Braunias
You’d never know that back home the wheels were falling off, that Derek Handley was making the Government look bad, that Meka Whaitiri was making it look worse than just bad — one thing about Jacinda Ardern is that she seems like someone who is always up for a good time. She was up for a good time on the Stephen Colbert show and promptly, serenely, went about having a good time.
It was a pleasant six-minute advertisement for Brand New Zealand. She talked about hobbits. She talked about direct flights from Chicago. She talked about
She bought into the old everyone-knows-each-other routine that makes half the world think of us as cute and neighbourly, and the other half suspect we’re a nation of inbreds.
She was funny, charming, smart, relaxed. She didn’t say anything particularly interesting but then she never does, really. To interview her is to gain a little bit of information and an awful lot of flannel, all told with a nice, open smile. Colbert got what the press gallery gets.
In any case the interviews on US talkshows are always the most boring part of the programme. After the determined, sometimes incisive satire of the opening monologue, a show like Colbert’s gives way to the usual kiss-ass drivel of the celebrity interview. It’s up to the guest to radiate star quality. That’s the point of the exercise, the challenge.
Simon Bridges would fail spectacularly. Terrifying to imagine him on Colbert’s couch, try-hard and tongue-tied and troglodytic. Ardern was radiant, at ease, a happy camper, pure stardust. Politics, like Hollywood, is the art of the illusion.
● It is Ardern’s last full day of appointments as she winds up the New York trip. It includes the first meeting of the Carbon Neutrality Convention established by France’s Emmanuel Macron, and a meeting with former Australian PM Julia Gillard at a New York Times summit on women in leadership.
● As for Neve, Ardern said she was fairly popular among other leaders: “Politicians love holding a baby.” — Claire Trevett