Trans Tasman on Clark

Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, October 12th, 2007 - 5 comments
Categories: International - Tags:

Articles like this – particularly in international media – must worry Key and National. How do you even begin to challenge a leader like Clark?

We can see from Keenan’s email to Brash (p131) from The Hollow Men that National’s strategy at the last election was the Rovian “attack your opponent’s strengths” – this explains National’s tireless challenges to her integrity – what they perceived as her biggest strength. Nothing’s changed. No doubt it’ll be more of the same this time round.

Pursuing The Country’s Interest

After a dismal night in Cardiff and a 22-hour flight home, Helen Clark might have been expected to take time out to recuperate. Instead she went straight to a Cabinet meeting in Wellington on Tuesday, followed by Caucus, before she fronted in Parliament.

It’s another example of the stamina enabling her to outpace her contemporaries. She is deftly managing a political balancing act, projecting herself as a national leader above day-to-day party scuffles, (in what Trans-Tasman has previously alluded to as almost in a presidential role) but within her own circle she remains almost ferociously tribally Labour.

In the wider community the perception is she is pursuing the national interest, lifting NZ’s international profile, while at home, the iron discipline she exerts keeps in line what would otherwise be a motley and potentially unruly collection. Even though Labour has been trailing National in the opinion polls, sometimes by a large margin, voters perceive Clark as the essential glue which holds the coalition together.

The Greens’ Sue Bradford put it bluntly this week, saying she could never work with National, and this probably goes for the other former communists among the Greens. And since the Greens are the only party among the minors which has been polling above the 5% threshold, it means a left-leaning coalition is more likely to emerge from an MMP election in 2008, unless National can do what no other party has done in the MMP era, and score above, or close to, the 50% mark.

5 comments on “Trans Tasman on Clark ”

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  1. Sam Dixon 1
    12 October 2007 at 1:47 pm

    Good to see the Trans-Tasman is finally getting its head around the electoral maths. it was getting quite trumphalist for National for a while there.

  2. Monty 2
    12 October 2007 at 8:45 pm

    national will win the next election is a landslide as people are waking upi to how vile and corrupt this government really is. The EFB is the final straw for many and when the extent of corruption to our democracy becomes realised, then honest but disgusted left voting people will either stay away from the polling booths or better still vote Blue to get rid of Helen Clark and her vile government.

    Clark is nothing but an ambitious power hungry politician. The Country is getting sick of her and her incompetant bunch of unionists. Labour are washed up and their days are well and truely numbered.

  3. Thomas 3
    12 October 2007 at 9:33 pm

    The country might be but the city loves her

  4. Shane 4
    12 October 2007 at 10:46 pm

    Monty
    Those are bold predictions this far from the election. How silly will you feel if you are wrong?
    I, and many others, happen to think Helen Clark and her government are not that bad. They are not perfect by any means, but really are not that bad.
    “Clark is an ambitious and power hungry politician” To do her job you would need to be I feel. Isn’t that the path that John Key is trying to walk (in a “green”, inexperienced, and unprofessional way)?

  5. r0b 5
    13 October 2007 at 10:46 am

    Monty – I guess it is good that you have found blogging as a safe outlet for your confusion and anger. If you one day get past those issues, facts and reasoned debate would be most welcome here.