Still a trader at heart… gambling with Kiwi lives

Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, November 14th, 2009 - 12 comments
Categories: john key, leadership - Tags:

Here is one excellent article from Tracey Barnett in the Weekend Herald

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Admit it: John Key’s most memorable moment in one year of office was seeing him on the stage of The David Letterman Show, smiling like somebody’s brother-in-law you’d forgotten you went to school with.

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It’s as if we ordered a competent business manager for our Prime Minister, and forgot to ask for a leader

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John Key is still a trader at heart. But my fear is that he is gambling with Kiwi lives… John Key’s stale, indefinable reassurance that Kiwis are “fighting terror” sounds like a punch line without the joke, eight years on

12 comments on “Still a trader at heart… gambling with Kiwi lives ”

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  3. John Dalley 3
    14 November 2009 at 8:53 pm

    I found Tracy to be disturbingly accurate in her assessment of John Key.

  4. Ianmac 4
    14 November 2009 at 9:27 pm

    Had dinner tonight with a chap who tells me that John Key is an intelligent astute man. I could not agree or disagree since it was his home. But tend to agree with Tracey. We will see until Sir John exits the stage smiling hugely.

    • Tigger 4.1
      14 November 2009 at 11:48 pm

      Yes, people tend to credit Key with adjectives all the time. The type of thing you do to someone who you know isn’t quite great but you desperately want them to be great so you constantly talk up their good points. You can be intelligent and astute and still be a crap leader. You can be charming, likeable, even tempered, good with money, able to gain people’s confidence and still be a crap leader.

      Key is a crap leader. No amount of spin-worthy adjectives can save him.

  5. Draco T Bastard 5
    14 November 2009 at 11:30 pm

    That’s one of her few opinion pieces that I agree with.

  6. Jemima 6
    15 November 2009 at 1:06 am

    Her article made me laugh, I think she is spot on with her analysis of John Key. I found him to be hilarious on the David Letterman show. Firstly, getting some of the facts wrong, but mostly because it was so obviously rehearsed. Some people can make it look natural and improvised. He looked like he was reading off a tele prompter. And the thing about his smile. It’s an ongoing joke in my family. His smile is so horrible and vacant and fake. He is an awful leader. Oh, but he’s a pretty relaxed guy………………………..

  7. SHG 7
    15 November 2009 at 1:46 am

    Admit it: John Key’s most memorable moment in one year of office was seeing him on the stage of The David Letterman Show

    Nope. Haven’t seen it, don’t care.

  8. the sprout 8
    15 November 2009 at 8:50 am

    like Bush i don’t think Key’s a fool by any stretch.
    but he surely ain’t no leader

  9. RedLogix 9
    15 November 2009 at 9:15 am

    Critics of Bush often fell into the trap of accusing him of being the Prince of Evil cunningly concocting dark plots over this and that, while at the same time lampooning the man for his lukewarm IQ and inability to string sentences together. It was fair enough to say that you couldn’t have it both ways.

    He confused people. On one hand he was, at least in the first years of his Presidency, popular as a relaxed kind of guy you could have a beer with. His verbal gaffes made him more like just ‘one of us’, his narrow, muddled aspirations reassured ordinary folk that his govt was likely to leave them alone to get on with their lives.

    For other’s less sanguine about Bush the result was a mixed messaging; one suspected that he was employing the Idiots Ruse, using his bumbling mediocrity as a cover for something sinister that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. You kept wondering what was really going on under the smokescreen.

    The reality was I think more subtle. Bush was not an unintelligent man, but he was a lazy, irresponsible, unprincipled and ultimately vaucous one. The lights were on, but there was no-one of significance at home. In the end it was his simple inability to do justice to the demands of President that became obvious to everyone.

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