Hard News: The Politics of Absence
523 Responses
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Seems the Goffice agrees with me, just a few days too late and without leveraging it.
See http://yfrog.com/kjpwdyvj -
Sacha, in reply to
it says something that in response to what I wrote, we're back to discussing some dumb thing Clare Curran said
National can only get away with meaningless fluff or policies like privatising state assets in the absence of a functional opposition or media - perhaps that's the true 'politics of absence' and why our attention returns there. It's also what needs to be fixed. Steven Joyce and chums will carry on doing whatever they can get away with.
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Tim Hannah, in reply to
David Clendon is the Green candidate for Mt Albert.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
David Clendon is the Green candidate for Mt Albert
Ah, thanks. He's no mug.
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Stephen Judd, in reply to
in the absence of a functional opposition or media
It’s pretty hard to be a functional opposition when the media are not interested in policy and have decided you’re going to lose. We’ve thrashed this out in endless detail over the last 2 years here, on the Dim Post, on Lew Stoddard’s blog, etc, and always I see a conversation that ends up like:
A: The media are crap and that’s why Labour can’t get traction.
B: If Labour weren’t crap, crap media wouldn’t be a problem.
A: What specifically could Labour do that wouldn’t be crap and would overcome the crapness of NZ news media?
B: That’s not my problem. -
James Butler, in reply to
Have the Greens announced a candidate for Mt Albert this year? I’m presuming it’s not Russel Norman.
It’s David Clendon.
ETA: Tim, snap. Refresh before posting James, refresh before posting.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
But the conduct of the Actual Prime Minister was of considerably more concern to me on Friday, and you didn’t indicate what, if anything, you thought about that.
Honestly, underwhelmed but surprisingly outrage deficient. But I really wasn’t in the mood for the entirely predictable round of “well, you would say that you Tory tool”, to which I’d fail to learn from experience and totally lose my shit.
If I was Key’s spin thing I’d have passed on that Radio Live thing if there were legal issues around well… talking about actual politics. (I’d also have advised Labour about complaining about it, but what do I know?)
Then again, I’d suck as a political spin doctor because seeing Bronagh Key and Mary Goff peering out of the cover of some ghastly women’s mag – to remind us that their husbands are uxorious heterosexuals – makes my flesh crawl.
But again, it’s all very nice for the commentariat to sniff at “the politics of absence” but I’m so far over political journalists acting as if it has nothing to do with them or their employers. As I’ve said elsewhere, The Tailor of Gloucester is a charming bedtime story but it’s not how newspapers, television news and radio bulletins are put together. Why the hell should Goff and Key talk policy, as opposed to doing fluffy photo ops with their wives, when the media have (to coin a cliche) taken the phone off the hook?
National can only get away with meaningless fluff or policies like privatising state assets in the absence of a functional opposition or media –
Well, Sacha, I obviously agree with you up to a point. Then again, I've often said Helen Clark wasn't totally unjustified in having her issues with the media. But she did a lot of work, and surrounded herself with smart people who got the basics right -- send clear, consistent messages. Whether you agreed with Labour's tax policy in '99 or not (and the media coverage was far adulatory), you couldn't say it wasn't being put out there loud and clear. Pretty hard for National to make the secret agenda meme stick when the top rate hike was anything but.
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merc,
Asked if he had told Key before he went to air, English said he could not recall ''the exact sequence''.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/5726510/English-lashes-out-at-ratings-agenciesThe politics of absent mindedness.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
National can only get away with meaningless fluff or policies like privatising state assets in the absence of a functional opposition or media – perhaps that’s the true ‘politics of absence’ and why our attention returns there.
But, but ... Labour's entire campaign ("Own our future") is themed around opposition asset sales. Cunliffe et al have been pretty convincing on it. I'm just not quite sure why the focus now should be on that time the 28th-ranked person on the list was snippy about the Green Party and some bloggers were scornful of her but virtually no ordinary voters even knew it had happened. It just seems like indulging the absence.
I'm more inclined to go with Danyl's observation that polls show people like Labour policies and the general philosophy they embody -- but they really don't like the current leadership. That seems a much more convincing theory to me than anything to do with what Clare Curran wrote in her blog.
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Sacha, in reply to
Political campaigns shape discourses and win engagement. Even a disinterested or hostile media does not let the current bunch off the hook for their failure to connect meaningfully, to work well with allies, and to demonstrate basic organisational discipline that gives voters confidence.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
A: The media are crap and that’s why Labour can’t get traction.
B: If Labour weren’t crap, crap media wouldn’t be a problem.
A: What specifically could Labour do that wouldn’t be crap and would overcome the crapness of NZ news media?
B: That’s not my problem.Brilliant.
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BenWilson, in reply to
A: The media are crap and that’s why Labour can’t get traction.
B: If Labour weren’t crap, crap media wouldn’t be a problem.
A: What specifically could Labour do that wouldn’t be crap and would overcome the crapness of NZ news media?
B: That’s not my problem.Indeed. Coming up with solutions is considerably harder than identifying problems. It involves considering many options, some of which are probably total crap.
Far easier is to come up with no solutions, because then you can't make a mistake. That is what National has been doing the entire time it's been in power. It's acting like the opposition party, and Labour is forced to act like the party in power, expected to elaborate in great detail about totally hypothetical situations that they have no power to enact - these are easy targets for National.
It works, but only so long as you continue to do it. The moment National starts to actually do the things that they occasionally float quickly retracted balloons about, they find that the public does not support them. The only real question in my mind is "when will they finally go hard?". Next term? Or the term after that?
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Sacha, in reply to
People vote on confidence. That's about more than figurehead 'leaders', it also crucially involves unity and coherence. The lack of those has been constantly in the public eye (partly through skilled counter-campaigning from the right), so let's not pretend it's only happening 'now' or about one thing that one person said.
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Sacha, in reply to
Brilliant
but ultimately misleading. It's everybody's problem. Geez, even Craig's pitching in :)
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Sacha, in reply to
Labour is forced to act like the party in power
Who's 'forcing' them?
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Broken English...
English said he could not recall ‘’the exact sequence’’.
Maybe he is related to Mike Tindall...
England manager Martin Johnson admitted that Tindall's recollection of events with the woman in Queenstown "was inaccurate" and England have also apologised for an incident at the team's hotel in Dunedin
source...or perhaps it was the classic Andrew Card/George Bush scenario - After being told that New Zealand is under attack by the evil rating agencies Mr Key stoically carries on, not wishing to alarm the populace or miss the vital air-time publicity!
it gets my goat... -
Carol Stewart, in reply to
people like Labour policies and the general philosophy they embody
I have some difficulty in working out what that general philosophy is. The Labour electioneering pamphlet that arrived in our letterbox was a picture of a $100 note with the message Labour's policies will put more money in your pocket. WTF? Pretty much exactly the same words were used to sell tax cuts last time around. It was also rather depressing that one of the flagship policies to support this was the piddling one of saving a family $5 a week by cutting GST on fresh fruit and veg.
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merc, in reply to
I saw that too and thought the exact same thing, it's difficult to rail against buying votes with tax cuts when you vie for votes with spending promises. Epic fail.
As for it getting on your goat Ian, I think that's exactly what it was designed to do.National, too big to fail, Labour too small to succeed.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I’m more inclined to go with Danyl’s observation that polls show people like Labour policies and the general philosophy they embody –
And, oddly enough, I don't know many people who think John Key sneaks out on a Friday night to kick orphans and eat cute kitten sashimi on the downlow. While the media-political complex is heavily invested in some Manichean cage match, I suspect the wisdom of crowds is more likely to view National and Labour as one party slightly right of center and another slightly to the left. (A whole other kete of kai moana is where that mystical balance point actually is. If it's Peter Dunne, Gods help us all.) There's a tiresome shortage of batshit crazy or out and out evil in New Zealand politics -- which makes life dull but every time Michelle ("vaccines make you retarded - but what's my excuse?") Bachmann opens her mouth I'm glad to be bored.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Political campaigns shape discourses and win engagement. Even a disinterested or hostile media does not let the current bunch off the hook for their failure to connect meaningfully, to work well with allies, and to demonstrate basic organisational discipline that gives voters confidence.
What percentage of potential Labour voters even heard of Curran's blurt, or cared about it? Who else besides people who comment on lefty-liberal blogs is still thinking about it now?
The last time I argued about this on the Dim Post, I actually went and looked through the Red Alert archives for the previous four months for evidence of the received narrative -- whiny, entitled MPs blame the media instead of focusing on how to sell themselves to the media they've got.
There was quite honestly virtually nothing there to support it. The MP bloggers were resolutely gung-ho and on-message. Seriously, Sacha, what else do you think they ought to have been saying?
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James Butler, in reply to
The Labour electioneering pamphlet that arrived in our letterbox was a picture of a $100 note with the message Labour’s policies will put more money in your pocket. WTF? Pretty much exactly the same words were used to sell tax cuts last time around.
And for National, it worked. Wherein lies the problem.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Tack scuts...
The Labour electioneering pamphlet that arrived in our letterbox was a picture of a $100 note with the message Labour’s policies will put more money in your pocket. WTF?
They could've just had a shot of a few coins,
with a "vote for change" slogan...
...or better yet, same coins, and "this is what National will have you begging for after they've flogged off your future income sources!" -
Carol Stewart, in reply to
But surely it's not going to work on Labour supporters? I agree with Merc - epic fail.
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Sacha, in reply to
What percentage of potential Labour voters even heard of Curran's blurt, or cared about it?
How do explain their woeful standing in the polls, as a matter of interest?
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Sacha, in reply to
what else do you think they ought to have been saying?
For some of them, less :)
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