So now we have the binge election. Just like old times. Try this scenario. The economy is booming. Agricultural prices are high. The Budget is flush. A Finance Minister says: “I’ve spent the lot.”
2005? No, 1972. Sir Robert Muldoon’s chortle of glee at having, he thought, skewered his Labour opposition, mattered not a whit in the election.
Tax is now on the table. Do the numbers, decide your vote. Is that the election?
Or do you add up what parties want to spend on you or your children or on roads or police or your special fancy?
Helen Clark has studied John Howard’s election-winning technique in Australia’s election last October. Howard spent the bank and won a fourth term. Don Brash is taking a leaf from George Bush’s election-winning book: tax cuts will make us all rich.
Second of five
Don Brash wore a red tie in the leaders debate on TV3 on August 11. Red conveys strength and warmth, marketers say. Blue just won’t do.
Such is campaigning in the twenty-first century. Contrast Sir Keith Holyoake’s 1969 campaign opening in a dingy hall in Christchurch — shouting to be heard over anti-Vietnam protesters’ barracking barrage, forgetting that his real audience was not in the hall but on the end of a radio, hearing the protesters as muted background.
Those were the days, 20 years back. The choice was Labour or National or protest: Sir Robert Muldoon obsessive-aggressive micro-manager, expansive-defensive rhetorician David Lange or victim-prophet Bruce Beetham.
They’ve all now gone. Lange’s death symbolically administers the last rites to that age.
First of five A curse on small parties, some say. Why can’t Labour and National get together and stop tails wagging the dogs? After all, this line goes, there is less difference between the two big parties than between them and some of the minors.
Not so. Our politics are built around the two big warring parties, which have in the past joined forces only in times of national crisis.
What’s the business call in this election — short-term or long-term, tactical or strategic? Most would say short-term tactics require a policy shift. But long-term strategy needs durable policy. Do the two match in this election?
The simple business call goes something like this: lower tax, less regulation, a national interest override of local yokels on resource consents, more roads, guaranteed energy at reasonable prices.
Campaigning is a mix of luck, the economy, public mood, charisma, message, discipline, management — and pugilism.
Luck is by definition outside parties’ sphere of influence, except in what they make of it. So, to a large extent, is the economy in a nation dependent on trade, though regulatory, tax and fiscal settings contribute.
The wonder of this election is that National is in full contention after only 21 per cent last time. What does history say about its chances of going all the way?
Go back to 1928. That’s nearly 80 years ago but history doesn’t hang on decades.
In the 1910s and 1920s, despite running elections under first-past-the-post, this country had a multi-party system. In three elections after 1912, when Reform’s Bill Massey first won office by ousting the Liberals on a no-confidence motion after an inconclusive election in 1911, he only once won a decisive majority, in 1919.
Behind Trevor Mallard’s redistribution of tertiary education money from bad courses to good ones lies a disturbing story — not just of waste but of managerial breakdown. The state’s machinery didn’t work properly.
Indicted stand former Tertiary Education Minister Steve Maharey, Secretary of Education Howard Fancy, a truckload of full-time and part-time bureaucrats and umpteen people who allege they are “academics”.
It’s pot and kettle time: gunpowder-blackened politicians blackening other politicians. That side of politics helps earn politicians their low trust ratings.
Don Brash feigns anger (or maybe is actually angry) at being misrepresented when his Iraq and nuclear policy words are quoted out of context. With hand on presbyterian heart, he declares his billboards just point up differences with Labour.