Jon Johansson: Our leader lacking in uplifting rhetoric

COMMENT

Rhetoric is one of a political leader's chief instruments of strategy. It is also an independent source of political power, derived from the force of a leader's ideas and the quality of their receptiveness among the great unwashed of humanity.

Accordingly, history has often remembered its pivotal moments through the words of its leaders.

Just last week Americans celebrated and debated afresh the fulfilment of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream ... " speech, a speech that ennobled the civil rights movement at a crucial time in its history.

Dr King raised the consciousness of all Americans by saying that when freedom rang his people would finally be able to say that they were "free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last".

Two years later, when the Johnson Administration passed the Voting Rights Act that finally secured the franchise for African Americans, Lyndon Johnson ended his speech to Congress with those same words.

That most august chamber of American democracy was transformed in a moment, leading one historian vividly to describe how "tears rolled down the cheeks of senators, congressmen and observers in the gallery, moved by joy, elation, a sense that the victor, for a change, was human decency, the highest standards by which a nation was supposed to live".

Americans, of course, can look further back - to Abraham Lincoln - for another source of high ideals expressed through political rhetoric. During his Gettysburg address, which followed the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, Lincoln, through a rhetorical sleight of hand, gave his country a new past to live with that would forever change its future.

In his address Lincoln introduced a new moral dimension to the competing national narratives fighting over the soul and direction of the American experiment. In New Zealand, however, we have neither developed nor fostered a political culture that is receptive to prime ministerial rhetoric.

Lofty ideals and high rhetoric have offered few advantages when a more brusque approach was available. For instance, when Labour's Bill Rowling appropriated Dr King's "I have a dream ... " speech he was met by ridicule. The nation preferred the more forthright oratory of Robert Muldoon, as misleading and exclusionary as the vast majority of his rhetoric proved to be.

The collective nature of our leadership, manifested through the all-encompassing Cabinet government doctrine, has further stilted prime ministerial rhetoric, although David Lange's efforts at the Oxford Union provided a rare exception.

Secondly, New Zealand has never developed a strong tradition of elevating leadership as an idea we should value for its own sake. There has always been a strong strand of the national character that has tended to ostracise those who would call themselves leaders, those who raise their heads above the parapet, only to become disillusioned by the criticism then encountered.

Many writers on New Zealand have observed this cultural strand, an indigenous trait that I label negalitarianism. Leslie Lipson, in his 1948 study, The Politics of Equality, exquisitely described it: "In its anxiety to raise minima, the country has deemed it necessary to lower maxima."

Yet a skilled prime minister, one who commands the public's trust and esteem for public leadership, draws independent and potentially considerable power from rhetorical effort.

And while our negalitarian culture might not provide fertile ground for appeals to our better angels, that is not to say that successive efforts by committed, purposeful prime ministers could not enrich our meagre soil.

Which brings us to the foreshore and seabed. If this debate has reinforced anything, it is that the country remains mired in its present, still blighted by its past. The path forward is unclear. And if the Government's opponents possess one really telling criticism, it is that a vacuum has been created in the absence of the Prime Minster providing an overarching vision of how she sees race relations progressing.

Colin James has suggested that Helen Clark has slung a rope bridge, one called the public domain. He argued that she should actively use her high office to mobilise the nation's commitment behind what was fundamentally a rhetorical device to move both Maori and Pakeha beyond the rigidly polarised, competing notions of ownership that have characterised the discourse.

James was, as usual, insightful in identifying the need for Helen Clark to take an active role at this critical moment to promote more adaptive nation-building than we have seen or heard.

One suspects, however, that the Prime Minister abhors political rhetoric. She is uncomfortable expressing her values or heartfelt feelings through her language. This is function of her personality but the Prime Minister's dim view of rhetoric was also shaped by experience.

For all of Mr Lange's rhetorical gifts, it was those more committed members of the fourth Labour Government such as Roger Douglas and Geoffrey Palmer who got things done. Neither was noted for a gift of oratory.

Yet during the last election campaign, during a rare moment of self-reflection, Helen Clark spoke of her vision for the country, a place "in which every single citizen has a real and general stake". She also emphasised the need to foster the best possible relationship between peoples.

If ever the country needed its Prime Minister to provide an overarching, explanatory framework on the future of race relations, it is now. At the elite level, discourse on race relations is maladaptive and out of step with the discourse below the level of those who maintain a vested interest in exploiting division for political gain.

For instance, Bill English's National Party has descended some distance from the once-proud model of Doug Graham's authentic emotion and recognition at putting right the nation's injurious past when he signed, on behalf of the Crown, the Tainui settlement during the early 1990s.

As the leader of the other significant party, Mr English's position is irresponsible. We cannot afford partisanship over race relations. If we can at all, it must be kept at the margins, not in the centre.

The challenge, then, is for the Prime Minister to exhibit real leadership during this difficult time. A continued vacuum will simply not do, for the purpose of leadership itself is to act as an instrument for social adaptation. That is, leadership is something from which society can learn more adaptive strategies to improve the quality of its choices.

The time is right, right now, for the Prime Minister to make an appeal to our better angels. It is time for Helen Clark to force the spring.

* Jon Johansson lectures in political leadership and New Zealand politics at Victoria University.