Could New Zealand descend into right-wing unreason after Ardern, like the US did after 2016?
Jacinda Ardern has suddenly quit politics. As tributes come in pointing to her charisma, style of leadership and communication skills, one is reminded of Barack Obama, that other extraordinary leader in recent times. There are, come to think of it, more than superficial parallels in their career trajectories.
To begin with, both were able to generate to mass hysteria in their race to high office. New Zealand is a small country but Jacindamania was just as intense as the rapturous reaction to Obama leading up to, and following, the November 2008 election.
Both Ardern and Obama built their reputation around the power of words. Both had at least one slogan that they came to be identified with: “Yes, we can!” for Obama and “Be Kind” for Ardern. Their eloquence was often seen on campaigns and especially in times of tragedy.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 Obama, spoke these words at Newtown in Connecticut:
I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you're not alone in your grief; that our world too has been torn apart; that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you, we've pulled our children tight. And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide; whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown — you are not alone.
After the shooting in Christchurch in 2019, Ardern said:
What words adequately express the pain and suffering of 50 men, women and children lost, and so many injured? What words capture the anguish of our Muslim community being the target of hatred and violence? What words express the grief of a city that has already known so much pain?
I thought there were none. And then I came here and was met with this simple greeting. As-salaam Alaikum. Peace be upon you.
Besides reading the mood and summoning the right tone and voice, Ardern and Obama were also known for the mastery of their brief. Obama’s speechwriters have commented on the former president reworking speech drafts late in to the night, where he sometimes took speeches in an entirely different direction by writing “six or seven pages of scrawled handwriting on a yellow legal pad”. They also reported on the difficulty of framing policy for a leader who often knew the subjects well enough to challenge the specialists. Ardern is in the same league; she was willing to be cross-examined by the media more frequently and rigorously than any other contemporary head of government, and showed through Covid-19 that she could argue the science at length with reporters and correlate it to details of her policy. There is scarcely a policy subject or a value preference that Ardern finds difficult to articulate and defend her view on.
Ardern and Obama were also famously known for their disciplined messaging, not known for leaks from within their administration or for frequent grandiose pronouncements – causing critics on their left to suggest that for all their progressive fervour in campaigns, they had a conservative style of governing. Worth noting too that there was not a hint of personal scandal during Ardern and Obama’s tenures in power.
Of course there were major differences between the two because the size of the countries they governed prompted very different policy choices. Obama sanctioned, for instance, drone killings of terrorist leaders, a decision that someone like Ardern would have never had to confront or countenance.
But there is something in the way their careers ended that speaks to their place and role in their respective (emerging) political cultures. Obama served out his two terms as president but he became a target of vitriol and hate speech in the right-wing political and media universe. Ardern, likewise, has been subject to relentless online attacks and abuse. In both cases, one or two issues were picked or emerged as vehicles for generating abuse. For Obama, it was the 'birther' conspiracy that Donald Trump used to stoke (often racialised) anti-Obama narratives; for critics of Ardern disagreements with Covid-19 restrictions became the cover for generating misogynistic attacks and hate strong enough to eventually pose a security risk to her.
This in the end will have played its role in Ardern’s decision to quit, as former prime minister Helen Clark has indicated. This is not to say there were no political realities that influenced the decision. Ardern may have peaked as a politician and a celebrity, owing to the overexposure in recent years. Notwithstanding the trailblazing success in the initial phases of Covid, she has probably not done enough on the policy front to secure a third term. The gaping failure on housing and general disaffection of business meant that she never attained a New Labour/Blarite reputation for governing (although Labour is held up to a higher standard by business groups than conservatives are). There is no one major item on the governance agenda that Labour looks like delivering in the future. It appeared that there was no more a tangible outcome or vision for her to strive for. She protected the welfare state, advanced indigenous symbols and causes, but was not in a position to reap political benefits because smaller parties are cutting in to her support base.
There are also genuine questions if her brand of centrism has answers to challenges ahead. Recession looms, an understated but rigid cultural factionalism exists, welfare benefits are contested but baked into the country’s political ethos.
But idealist politicians are rarely known to give up on progressive ends. They push on and western democracies offer leaders the deliberative space to evolve in different directions, to make new arguments and build new coalitions, especially for a figure like Ardern with a strong following among the young. But Ardern may have felt that that space was being denied to her as the online attacks accelerated.
As she leaves the scene, one wonders where those aggressive masculine right-wing energies – channelling content from the paranoid flank of Trumpian (including religious) America – will be deployed next.
New Zealand has serious questions to tackle about its future. There’s a cost of living crisis, housing is scarce, Māori-Pākehā relations are structurally fraught, immigrants are needed for economic reasons but not culturally wanted. Cultural fissures widen when a country reworks its sociological profile and economic order under the pressures of globalization. Europe and the United States are currently grappling with such social conflicts and seeing far-right parties gain support.
Ardern suppressed and delayed unsavoury trends in New Zealand’s public life with her stature and the politics of kindness. Without that norm-setting authority it may well be a free for all in political discourse, as New Zealand normalises itself and experiences the troubles of other Western democracies.
Some may disagree and contend that the imperatives of forming coalition governments in a proportional representation system have the potential of restraining extremism. Social media, however, constantly weaponises sentiment in ways that traditional political institutions are struggling to cope. America after Obama degenerated into right-wing unreason. New Zealand should be worried that it has allowed its supreme exponent of deliberative democracy to be run out of politics.
