Elections 2011 - Fit the second

No, I did not watch the “Leadership Debate” on the tv last night. I had a few better things to do.

No, I am not sorry. (That is the same kind of answer as “I am not going to raise GST”.)

From the reports, seen and read, I have the impression that it was pretty much as scripted. The Jonkey was not surprised by anything that the Gofer raised, though there is a suspicion that he was momentarily a bit backed up by the delivery. Similarly, there seems to have been no surprises for the Gofer.

And that really is the point. These leadership presentations are not much more than proving to the electorate that the leaders they are voting for are not zombies, are not frothing at the mouth maniacs, can and do hold something that could pass for a conversation. But, as politics keeps reminding us, that is about as far as it goes.

The pundits and propounders are all weighing the outcome as even, favouring whichever side of the divide they sit.

Of course, there are always the likes of Cactus Kate who is trumpeting Brash Donnie’s “triumph” over a hapless tv3 reporter. In that instance the script only ran to two words. Brash Donnie was not able to expand past his robot-like inchantation of “deceitful bastard”. CK herself seemed stuck in a groove to prove the journo’s typo revealed a total inability to spell. Yep, well as I pointed out in a submitted comment there are a lot of suitable alternative epithets. Rather than ascribing to the Chris Christie school of political attack the Donnie could perhaps get a whole lot more benefit from a quiet review of a few of the archive tapes of the master, old Mouldie himself. As for handling unwanted journos, Mouldie’s attack on Tom Scott has to be the pinnacle.

There is a rich vein of commentary in this. It follows the interdependence of politician and journalist; both need the other. In Muldoon v Scott, the dependence was “broken” because Scott became “expendable” to Muldoon. There were far more servile channels he could use and Scott was just too hostile. Personally, I think that Scott was doing his job well and that was to get Muldoon pissed off…

There is a similar conflict in the relationship between Granny Herald and The Speaker just before Parliament rose for the RWC.