Phil Goff is a twit.

Idiot Savant has been around the Kiwi blogosphere about as long as I can remember. He’s quite left wing. Anyone who things Lauren Southern and Stephan Molyneaux are national socialists has swallowed the cool aid. They are a white nationalist and an old fashioned libertarian.

Both of them are pretty good at getting responses, and our Savant friend knows this. He argues, correctly, that the…

Three Labour leaders for TPP

Two of Labour’s former leaders, Phil Goff and David Shearer, who are still senior members of its caucus are quite clear that they support the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). A third former leader, Helen Clark, also supports the agreement. Mr Goff, a former leader and former Trade Minister and now an Auckland mayoral candidate, and David Shearer, also […]…

Tomorrow 100 years will have passed since Kiwi soldiers landed at dawn on Anzac Cove at the start of the Gallipoli campaign. That generation has now passed on and there is a dwindling number left of those who served in World War Two who are now all in their nineties. On Saturday, tens of thousands of New Zealanders, young and old, will gather at war memorials around the country to honour those who served and died for New Zealand. For many of us, our foremost thoughts will be around members of our own families who fought and died in the two world wars and subsequent conflicts. My grandmother lost her older brother in the First World War and her youngest son, my uncle, aged just 19 years in the Pacific in World War Two. Their photos are still on our walls at home. I remember the sadness in my grandmother’s voice when she talked about losing those near and dear to her who she loved. It’s difficult to imagine how hard it is for a mother to lose her son. Sadly, a generation later I saw that pain again when my sister lost her son killed in action in 2007 in Afghanistan. Watching with my family as his casket was lowered from the military plane, which brought his body home, was a tragic and sad occasion that I will never forget. Anzac Day is the time when all of us remember the New Zealanders who laid down their lives for their country and their mates. Those of us who never ourselves had to experience the sacrifice and trauma of fighting a war remember with gratitude those who suffered and died for a better world for subsequent generations. Anzac Day is not, however, a time when we glorify war. Gallipoli was an ill-thought out campaign in which tens of thousands died and suffered horribly for no good effect. The survivors of Gallipoli were then dispatched to Europe to be shot, shelled and gassed in their thousands in the awful battles on the Western front. New Zealand lost over 18 000 of its young men in the First World War, a higher casualty rate per head of population than any other country except Russia. Taking those who were wounded into account, over 60 per cent of the 100 000 who left our small country to go to the war became casualties. The Great War, supposed to be the war to end all wars, simply planted the seeds for another war that engulfed the world 21 years later. In the Second World War, we lost over 12 000 men. Nazi ideology in Europe and Japanese invasion of the Pacific threatened our values and way of life. We needed to protect ourselves against aggression and the threat the Axis Powers posed to humanity. A good friend of my father’s, Jack, who is still alive came from a Christian Pacifist family and was initially imprisoned for refusing conscription. As he thought more and more about what was happening in the war, he decided he was wrong. He joined the army and later won the military cross for gallantry in the Italian campaign. Both his initial and his later decision required courage. There are clearly times when we have to stand up and fight for what is right. Regrettably, there are many other occasions where conflicts could have been resolved without resort to war. Too often politicians have been gung ho about sending other people to their deaths in wars without thinking about consequences or other possible options. On Anzac Day, we remember those who sacrificed their lives but also commit ourselves to learn the lessons of the past and strive to create a more peaceful future.

In desperation political strategists clumsily attempt to show the 'real person' behind their client politician.

NZ Labour Leader David Cunliffe has just tried to come across as likable. The failed leader he replaced, David Shearer, tried to humanise himself and lull voters by guitar. The failed leader before him, Phil Goff, tried it with spades and motorbikes.

The back-story tactic is not exactly wrong. What science knows about people is that we assess character and trustworthiness by past actions, and a little about the company people keep.

But it fails largely because it is used by ham-fisted strategists as a one-off tactic, not a long term strategy, and too often at the point a politician is already failing.

You can see it in my list above of successive Labour leaders: they were desperate because voters appeared not to have initially connected with them.

In response, their strategists search to quickly establish the soul of the politician that should have been established a long time ago and over a long period. Frankly, by the time you're doing an "inside the real politician" feature story, you've already lost.

It doesn't work because it's too late, but also because it's too obvious. We all know from our personal experience what happens when we or others try too hard to be liked - it turns people off.

In setting out to make friends we do best when we take it slowly, gradually, with keenness to connect, but without apparent effort.

More than that though - what works in trying to connect with people is being interested in them, not trying to prove yourself.  What works is asking questions and listening to them.

But at this stage in their desperation, the politician is also too busy promoting their own ideas, and the back story is more of an attempt to show the ideas originate from an authentic 'ordinary' person.

The personality strategy has to start when the politician starts. It can't be introduced later.

That's because there's one factor that people rate more highly than history and back story, in their assessment of political character: and that's the right now.

People judge character most strongly on what is said and done right now.  Faced with a question, threat, issue, or opportunity today, how does the politician respond? What does their response say about their attitudes, ideology, philosophy and trustworthiness?

This semester I'm starting my first internship (since I don't think ROTC really counts).  BU Abroad hooked me up in a big way and I'm working for Phil Goff, one of New Zealand's Parliamentarians and the former leader of the Labour Party (one of NZ's two primary political parties).  I'm an International Relations major with a focus on Foreign Policy and Security Studies and Mr. Goff is the Labour spokesperson for foreign affairs and defense, so it couldn't be a better fit.  

I have to catch the bus to work every morning, which I originally wasn't too thrilled about, but once I figured out how to get the student discount on the bus and discovered the super cheap produce store and butcher right across the street, I warmed up to the idea.  I'm pulling 9-5's Monday, Wednesday, Friday and 9-2/3 on Tuesdays.   My two coworkers/supervisors/sources of entertainment over the work day are Elaine and Terry, two veterans of the NZ political system.  They're both great people and helped me get set up in the office (which was actually fairly difficult, there's no wifi and getting my laptop on the internet was a lengthy process).  Phil comes in on Mondays and Fridays, which always ups the work level, but in a good way. For work, I've done everything from trying to decipher handwritten petition data about stopping State Owned Enterprise sales (if you're from NZ you know what I'm talking about, if not I'd need a whole other blog to explain it) and enter it into the Labour Party website to canvasing constituents to attending a ribbon cutting ceremony at a local rugby club.  I'm starting to learn the minutia of the New Zealand political system and what electorates are where and I even got a glimpse into the proposed future of New Zealand social supports (welfare, education, et al) at a meeting of all the local Parliamentarian secretaries.