Jacinda Ardern is having her own Obama moment . . .

The parallels between New Zealand’s 40th prime minister and the 44th US president are marked by similarities and contrasts.

Nothing demonstrates the vagaries of political perception better than Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s overseas missions in the past three weeks.

Having led a successful trade mission to the US, where Ardern’s star power shone from late-night talk shows to meeting President Joe Biden to giving the commencement speech at Harvard University, she then went on to reset fractured Anzac relations with newly-installed Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

It would be easy to surmise from those successes that, as a country obsessed with what others think of us, she would receive a bump in the polls here.

Instead, Ardern returned home to a grumpy electorate, consumed by raging inflation and falling house numbers, and a Roy Morgan poll that has the Opposition National/ ACT parties with a seven-point lead in the polls, the largest since Ardern came to office.

How could the electorate be so ungrateful?

The answer lies in the fact that the prime minister is experiencing her own Obama moment, defined by Ardern’s popularity overseas not being matched by her popularity at home.

The parallels between New Zealand’s 40th prime minister and the 44th US president are marked by similarities and contrasts. Both were elected on the most ephemeral of political promises, in Obama’s case hope, in Ardern’s transformational change, but at different times of the political cycle.

Eighteen months after being appointed, Obama was more popular overseas than at home. A Pew Research Center poll published in June 2010 had his popularity strongly favourable in Western Europe, with 73% ratings in France and 63% in Germany, while at home his job approval ratings had dipped to 46%, compared with a rating of 67% after his inauguration.

In contrast, Ardern’s popularity, while dipping initially in the early years of the coalition government, rose to unparalleled heights in 2020, due to the Government’s Covid response, to achieve the extraordinary feat of a clear majority in the 2020 election.

But it’s in the middle of their second terms that the two leaders’ respective political currency slides; for Obama in October 2014, when 40% approved of his job performance, and for Ardern, with 33% making her preferred prime minister in the May 30 One News/ Kantar poll.

Her star power continues to ensure she leads the pack, but that rating was down one point, in a steady decline since 2020. And it was that most corrosive of political perceptions that drove those poll numbers down – how each leader handled the economy.

For the prime minister, the rosy glow of approval overseas is having the opposite effect at home because there’s a sense that she’s not getting on with the business that more than half of Kiwi voters brought her to power on, to run the country and manage the economy.

There will be those who will argue that inflation, Covid fatigue and rising costs are all international phenomenons affecting leaders around the world, but it’s the perception of how leaders deal with those problems that will define their success. Or not.

But despite the polls, history shows that the future is not set in stone, with other leaders coming back in the face of economic adversity.

Bill Clinton was able to improve a significant slide in his poll ratings after the American public changed its views on the economy. As an aside, Clinton got his highest job approval rating, 71%, in February 1998 in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky saga.

And even Obama’s came back from his 2014 low. When Barack and Michelle Obama left the White House in January 2016, they both enjoyed their most favourable ratings since arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

As the country enters its winter of malcontent, Ardern will be hoping that Treasury Budget forecasts that the country will narrowly avoid a recession prove to be true.

This week’s gross domestic product figures, which had unexpectedly dropped 0.2% in the three months to the end of March, belie that, alongside the ongoing Ukraine war and news this week that Wall Street had slipped into a bear market.

If inflation continues and the Reserve Bank keeps pulling the official cash rate lever – as it has promised – then the Government’s $1 billion cost-of-living package, due to be implemented in August, will come too late for those earning under $70,000 a year.

To stop the slide in the polls and regain the crown as the party which is the most effective economic manager, the Government needs to act and act now to relieve the squeeze on Kiwi wallets.

That could be anything from a continuation of public transport subsidies, to continuing to cut fuel tax excise by 25 cents per litre, to ensuring there’s a third supermarket chain and the prospect of lower food prices.

If it doesn’t, political perception will become reality.