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Mammon & the Key to Wealth

I have decided to write a political blog. Great, I hear you say, another self-important refugee from the beltway who’s in love with the sound of his own voice and thankful for the internet revolution that provides self-aggrandising political junkies with an instant outlet for their musings.

Time will tell if my analyses are of interest to anyone, but coming from the world of public relations and, before that politics (and having also a dinner party (Masters) degree in politics et al), I’m at least “qualified” to undertake such a task. Unlike many journalists.

My lofty aim is make this a different type of blog to the usual political fare, which more often than not represents the views of well known personalities with recognised political standpoints. The trouble with such opinion pieces is that they don’t really add anything to our basic understanding of what is happening, or why, or even who.

Among the political writers of the modern era, one person stands head and shoulders above all others for making political commentary enlightening, entertaining and well, brutal. Hunter S. Thompson had no time for hypocrisy – or small ‘c’ conservatism and, in creating gonzo journalism, blazed a trail for the rest of us to give our thoughts equal billing with our subjects. Hunter S. Thompson was paving the way to the blogosphere before the superhighway was even a dirt road.

The Outlaw Pages are to be my nod to Hunter, and reflect my desire to bring a feral element back into political observation and commentary – something that hasn’t been done in New Zealand since the glory days of Bill Ralston and his smorgasbord of political junk food served. You know, before he jumped the shark and ended up being consumed by lunch.

I’m not going to trumpet my political beliefs. I don’t think they’re that relevant, and certainly establishing credentials as a champion of the left or right, or liberal or conservative isn’t something I think is all that helpful – except perhaps to those who are looking to dismiss my observations by attaching a supermarket label. I will say however, that like Hunter, I dislike small ‘c’ conservatism and conservatives. These people have never been good for a society.

So here we are, less than four months out from an election. There’s your first bit of political analysis. How do I know the election will be held on Nov the 8th ? Because an election must be held by 15 November and Prime Minister Helen Clark will not want it said she was scared of the coming apocalypse. But she will wait until the almost the very last second, in the delusional hope that John Key commits an error of such epic proportions that it costs National the election. Key isn’t quite that stupid of course. He has learnt the importance, albeit a bit slowly, of saying nothing. There will be a National Government by the end of the year, led by the most inexperienced leader we have had since … whenever.

The issues Clark faces in securing a historic fourth term are insurmountable. The very qualities that swept her to power in a wave of popular support are now the very qualities that voters are finding distasteful. The feelings have been building for some time. What’s playing itself out now is “the end of the affair”. It’s been a long relationship by any measure. Longer than most marriages.

Helen Clark came to power on a wave of revulsion at the desperate and embarrassing scenes played out by a National party that had sacrificed all its principles in the vainglorious pursuit of power and the need to simply stay in office. As a prominent ex-Minister in Muldoon’s regime observed to me recently, “after nine years the power gets to everyone. The limousines, the armies of servants, the sycophancy insidiously transforms into … a sense of entitlement.”

Clark was elected to be strong, accountable and to “clean up”. The electorate forgave her her foibles along the way. The signing of work that was not hers – politicians do this all the time of course, but it was a shock to think she was like all the rest. The speeding motorcade. We forgave her. She was racing to make an All Black test. We’d all like to do that. Clark’s approach to these sorts of crises was always the same. “It happened. I’ve learnt. Now its time to move on.” And New Zealand largely did. But we never forgot.

Like the poor sod who has an affair, apologises and when he is forgiven, genuinely believes that the slate is wiped clean, Clark is learning that the New Zealand public have quietly been going through their breakup angst from within the relationship.

In these times of greater hardship, stretched budgets, falling house prices and increasing mortgage rates, what is required, at the very least, is a politician who can genuinely convey compassion, understanding and empathy. These are not the qualities that Clark can even pretend to have. As Arts & Culture Minister, she is fiddling while New Zealand burns.

Of course the truly ironic thing is that John Key doesn’t have these qualities either. Nicky Hager painted Key, his predecessor and their coterie as “Hollow Men”, presumably because of their lack of substance. I don’t know. I haven’t read the book. Like the Sex Pistols, I hate hippies.

But John Key is not hollow. He is opaque. Is there a more soulless and inherently arbitrary vocation as currency trading? You don’t even have to be intelligent to do that. Key was in the trading game when even a dribbling scion of the Canterbury squatocracy could have made money. And many did.

The moral bankruptcy of the National Party of the late 1990s has been replaced by something equally as bad: An intellectually bankrupt government-in-waiting that will win office with a leader who possesses no other skill than that of making money. And we seem to believe that if we do this then maybe we’ll all make some. That is truly a joke, because if you hang around with these types, which I have done (and still do, occasionally) you learn quickly that these people do not share.

We know nothing about Key except that he is politically naïve, accident prone and decidedly shifty when the going gets even remotely tough. He is using the same political consultants as his ill-fated and equally politically naïve predecessor. He is a “state house boy made good”. That is about all we know of him.

National Prime Ministers were once politically experienced, seasoned operators who could take apart opponents at will. They were beings to be slightly in awe of. We are selling out to Mammon at a time when the money men of Wall Street and the City have been shown to have no clothes. To elevate one of these shallow men to the highest office in the land is truly a travesty and one that we will all come to regret. The only solace is that Key will almost certainly be rolled by a more experienced political operator very quickly after assuming office.