Politics
When political has-beens attempt to rise again, we should be very afraid.
It’s easy to mock the likes of Don Brash, Colin Craig and Kevin Rudd. Somehow, although they must all have heard the withering Paul Keating line about political comebacks, “Can a soufflé rise twice?”, they have decided the answer is yes.
If only they were just soufflés. This is more like a trio of leaden reheated scones. No amount of cash leavening has been able to reinflate their careers, and they’ve sunk like stones – only, astonishingly, none of them seems to have noticed yet.
At least in Rudd’s case, the former Aussie PM is only making a fool of himself and, although an embarrassment to Australia, is no serious reflection on that country. As a Twitter wit observed, Rudd’s desperate claim that whereas Australia wouldn’t nominate him to be United Nations Secretary-General, “another country” had offered to was like a schoolboy saying, “Yes, I’ve got a girlfriend. But you wouldn’t know her. She goes to another school.”
Brash has injured himself in a most unusual way. In trying to resuscitate his Orewa speech glory days with a new racial equality campaign, he has actually served to remind us how far we’ve come since the simplistic debates of 12 years ago and the “Iwi-Kiwi” hoardings. Voters now have a much more nuanced appreciation of biculturalism and far fewer see it as a transactional, onesize-fits-all affair the way Brash does. His claim of “Maori privilege” sits just as absurdly alongside Maori health, education, imprisonment and other social statistics as it did before. Only this time, rather than be offended or anxious about the divisive implications of his Hobson’s Pledge anti-separatism crusade, people are apt to feel sorry for him. If there are two social afflictions you don’t want to have simultaneously in your senior years, they’re relevance-deprivation syndrome and arrested development.
AND THEN THERE’S COLIN
Craig, however, has single-handedly collapsed a viable political vehicle that last election got within striking distance of Parliament and in the process caused misery to a lot of people. The excruciating details of Jordan Williams’ successful defamation case against him were superficially entertaining, but in a broader sense the matters traversed have been a tragedy for all concerned. As the subsequent release of the Human Rights Tribunal’s finding against him made shockingly clear, Craig had actually done rather worse than make himself look ridiculous. He has blighted the life of his former press secretary, Rachel MacGregor, behaving as no employer or person in a position of power should.
People who behave like this in affairs of the heart get restraining orders slapped on them.
Yet – and here’s the hallucinogen that is politics – he still believes he has a shot at elected office. Like Rudd and Brash, two supremely intelligent men, this highly successful man of business seems nevertheless to have but a toddler’s ability to process the word “no”. Maybe such politicians need a 12-step programme, but how many more rejections do these guys have to undergo before they agree to stay rejected? People who behave like this in affairs of the heart get restraining orders slapped on them. Politics offers no protection against constant harassment by eternal triers. As the kid says in The Sixth Sense, “They don’t know they’re dead.”
Holding public office and bestriding the media can be addictive. Once it stops, boredom and purposelessness can beset the most
resourceful. Former Labour Cabinet minister Michael Cullen said he used to plague his secretary – “Hasn’t anyone phoned? Nothing in the diary?” – early on in his first stint in Opposition. Winston Peters said he didn’t know what to do with his evenings in his first term out of Parliament.
But Keating’s barb was ingeniously double-edged. Not only can soufflés not re-rise, but they’re also only egg whites and air. Generally, only candidates of substance – such as Cullen and Peters
– get second chances in politics. Brash and Rudd’s second goes were fleeting and inglorious and their third are dead on arrival. Craig never even got a first crack. They’re all now running on sheer vanity.
LET’S NOT FORGET JOHN MINTO
Still, there are others lower in the political food chain who run quite genuinely for causes rather than glory, and whose incessantly rejected campaigning is more tolerable. In Christchurch, John Minto, who at press time seemed highly unlikely to be elected mayor, has been almost warmly received for putting a fantasy dimension into the debate.
He deserves points: only someone truly quixotic could return to face the public after trying to market a Marxist utopia last election as a candidate for uber-rich Kim Dotcom’s ludicrous InternetMana party and getting less than 2% of the vote
In Wellington, there’s Helene Ritchie, who as a qualified psychologist may even secretly understand why she puts herself through inevitable and decisive rejection as mayor every three years. In Auckland, there’s Penny Bright, who, although she understands in elaborate detail what it is that so inflames her that she won’t pay her rates and will pelt all-comers with emailed screeds elucidating it, is a complete mystery to most voters. But she always looks radiantly happy.
And in Invercargill, there’s the exception that proves the rule about the soufflé’s life cycle: Tim Shadbolt, an engaging buffoon who became an effective mayor of two cities.
Craig may, however, leave a legacy, even if not one he intended. Defamation law in the political arena, famously loosened when David Lange failed in a claim against political scientist Joe Atkinson in the late 90s, may be tightened thanks to Williams’ win. It’s subject to appeal, and there are several other defamation claims pending over the same matters, so we will have to await a potential pick’n’mix of settlements to be sure of the implications.
But one of Williams’ complaints was Craig’s saying he was out to undermine his leadership. Not a week goes by that political leaders everywhere don’t make this allegation, usually with good cause. People undermining leaders, either singly or in groups, is as good a definition of quotidian party politics as you’ll get. If it’s outlawed, how are plotting and conniving going to thrive?
Even someone who got their law degree by Facebook from Trump University would have to be concerned. Could Craig go down in history as the guy who accidentally took the politics out of politics?
Only candidates of substance – such as Cullen and Peters – get second chances.