KEY POINTS:
Politicians have something in common with artists: both must live in frequent amazement at the motives and meanings ascribed to their work.
Art criticism and political commentary also have something in common: both struggle to praise.
When John Key defied the conventions of adversarial politics and relieved the Government of the anti-smacking debacle on Wednesday I was keen to see what the commentaries would make of it next morning.
In the Herald, John Armstrong said the real winner was Helen Clark. "John Key will win huge and deserved plaudits for sacrificing National's political advantage," he began. But it was Clark, he decided, who had allayed parents' fear of prosecution, enticed National to "u-turn" and removed the issue from the agenda for the next election.
On Newstalk ZB, Colin James said Key had needed to distance National from extreme opponents of the bill.
In the Dominion Post Tracy Watkins wrote: "Miss Clark was the winner on points yesterday ... She was at her statesman-like best - an MMP leader still in her prime". Key, she allowed, had "opened the door to Miss Clark's victory" and now looked like a future Prime Minister.
I know something about the pitfalls of writing from Parliament. It is like sitting in the front row at the movies. The dominant characters are overlarge and the contest at close quarters can appear more important than it is.
From my seat, Key's extraordinary gesture looks straightforward. Like most of us, I suspect, he was heartily sick of the anti-smacking debate. The subject is distasteful and, frankly, Sue Bradford's bill was going to make so little change to the law it was not worth the antagonism it raised.
But opposition politicians do not normally make that calculation. If a government is committed to a bill distrusted by 80 per cent in opinion polls, an opposition is normally happy to watch it wriggle.
So why did Key come to the rescue? Probably he sensed there was not much more mileage in Labour's misery and he could pick up some credit for saving parents from the wildly exaggerated risk of prosecution.
But I'm lapsing into another old parliamentary pitfall: the assumption that every act is a political calculation. Let's not discount the possibility that Key is honest when he presents himself as a successful businessman who has not gone into Parliament to waste his time.
The attribute he believes he brings from his business career is the ability to ignore what does not matter and concentrate on what does.
People he knows smack their children rarely, if at all. Bradford believes her bill will send a message to those who have been brought up to believe in the "good hiding". I hope so too but it is hard to believe it will. (While adversaries were embracing on Wednesday the Destiny rally outside Parliament cheered the amendment that police should not prosecute inconsequential acts.)
Key strikes me as the kind of man who is not interested in fighting the next election on issues such as gay adoption, prostitution and infant discipline, though he may nod to the notion that this Government wants to meddle too much in family affairs. He has a more important project in mind.
Commentators could be doing a better job of explaining this. On TVNZ's Agenda last Saturday, journalist Jenny McManus recited one of those surveys that find business has no idea what National stands for. She saw this as an indictment of John Key; I think it is an indictment of those who are paid to be paying attention.
As National's finance spokesman at the last election it was evident in Key's speeches that he wants to make quite a distinct change of economic speed. He is fond of saying that if New Zealand was a stock he would buy it, but he would change its gearing.
He thinks the country is past the stage when it needs to continue with cautious, thrifty, balanced budgets and that it is time to invest in greater expansion. Besides returning revenue to the private sector in tax cuts and targeting welfare better, as indicated this week on family tax credits, he would, I think, borrow happily.
He is quite different from Michael Cullen and indeed Don Brash in that respect, and I am not sure he is right. John Key was not around for the reforms of the 1980s and 90s and seems to regard a public budget as an investment bank writ large.
Key does not, of course, express his intentions so crudely, and Cullen will claim he is investing for expansion too. But read Key's speeches, listen to what excites him, and the theme is there.
It worries me to hear it. But it will worry me more if his instincts and their implications do not enter public discussion until after the next election because those paid to listen have let us down.
