LOOKING PRIME MINISTERIAL

We’re constantly told by the media that Christopher Luxon lacks public support when compared with Hipkins. This is simply media imagery, nevertheless it’s hardly surprising. Where are Luxon’s minders?

As I’ve said on this Blog before, for God’s sake tell him to wear a tie and take his bloody hands out of his pockets.

Compare that with Hipkins. Always smartly dressed in suit and tie befitting the job.

That said, incumbency is a headstart in such imagery. For example, Labour’s only 3 term post-war Prime Minister, Helen Clark, always polled poorly pre-1999.

Off the top, only Rob Muldoon rolled an incumbent and polled higher pre-election.

But Rowling had a poor public image (thanks in large part to me – dig up his election night concession speech on TVNZ records on line and hear for yourselves in which he blamed me for his loss).

Indicative of his poor image, cartoonists always portrayed Rowling as smaller than Muldoon whereas in fact he was 2 inches taller.

That said, commentators hugely over-rate leaders imagery as an election factor. There are numerous reasons the government will suffer a landslide loss, as I’ve predicted on this Blog for nigh on two years now. Leadership imagery was only ever a factor with Muldoon and Jacinda but to cite the old boxing adage, the bigger you are, the harder you fall, their previous massive support transforming to massive contempt. Relatively plain-fare leaders, once out of office, are simply forgotten.

The big mark against Luxon is his religious beliefs which alarms thinking people, implying a character weakness in having faith in a bearded bugger in a ballgown wafting about in space calling all the shots. It’s infantile.

Since the 2^nd World War New Zealand has had 17 Prime Ministers. Nine were/are Labour and none were into superstition; although Lange initially professed a faith. I gave him hell about it as he was far too intelligent for such silliness and I suspect he quietly abandoned it in his latter years.

Of the 8 National PM’s only three were into superstition, two, Marshall and English being gifted the role and only lasting a few months to the election before being rolled.

So it’s noteworthy that the only ever elected superstition practitioner Prime Minister was Bolger in 1990. But the mood of the nation back then was much like today, namely an over-whelming desire to be rid of a truly incompetent government, so for the same reasons we’re soon to have our second post-war elected PM who believes in fairy stories.