Fran O'Sullivan: Clinton a role model for life after politics

Helen Clark must have winced when she read in the lead-up publicity to yesterday's global business forum that she would get the chance to grill Bill Clinton.

Okay, Clinton was a no-show at the Progressive Governance group's recent outing in South Africa, where Clark along with a number of the world's leading centre-left luminaries would have tossed around catchy policy solutions at their annual ideas junket.

But the Prime Minister has met the President several times now.

She took no time at all to correct an impression she was simply out to go one up on talk show host Paul Holmes who compered Clinton's last Auckland performance at a BMW-hosted dinner.

It's a funny thing how normally hard-bitten journalists go a bit gooey when they bracket a female political leader in the same sentence as the world's leading political rock star. Even crusty sub-editors can't help having a bit of sport where Bill Clinton is concerned.

I experienced a bit of it myself when I read the front-page pointer "When Fran met Bill" directing readers to "an interview with the Herald's foreign affairs editor Fran O'Sullivan" the time I traipsed across to London for a Clinton book interview as part of what was clearly his presidential redemption tour.

Like Jenny Shipley, her immediate predecessor as prime minister, Clark might indeed appear just that little bit girlish alongside this extremely charismatic male politician.

But these two female politicians are pretty hard-boiled. They know Clinton's undeniable sex appeal has an obvious political utility. Just ask Hillary Clinton, who will need his wattage to warm her own cool image if she gets the nomination as the Democrat candidate at the next United States presidential election in 2008.

There'll also be more than a bit of reflected glory in the offing for Clark when British Prime Minister Tony Blair traipses to New Zealand late next month for a fleeting visit. Blair and Clark also know each other pretty well. He helped get the US Government off her back after her very public gaffe at the start of the Iraq invasion. She successfully borrowed his Labour pledge card as collateral for her own election campaigns, raiding her Leader's Budget for the exercises.

Then there's the upcoming visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. It's fair to say that Wen - who does not have any obvious sex appeal - will not publicly overshadow Clark. She towers above him (physically).

His political utility is of a different kind. As the latest in a fast-growing list of top political leaders to visit New Zealand his presence will also help cement opinion that Clark is a leader who is capable of making it offshore with a big international job.

Which is just as well as we do not treat our past political leaders all that well.

Just ask Mike Moore, the former Labour Prime Minister (for eight weeks) and former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, who returned home last year to live, but struggles for local relevance.

Or the late Labour Prime Minister David Lange who turned down a diplomatic posting to India but (sadly) went on to make a parody of himself touring pubs with comedian Gary McCormick instead of making better use of his talents to forge a post-politics career.

Former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger burnished his own image with a period as New Zealand Ambassador to Washington then went on to cement a career back here as chairman of New Zealand Post.

But for the most part, as the expat businessman Douglas Myers has also found, when our top people get out of the water, it closes after them.

So when our top New Zealanders return visibly enhanced by their offshore success, it seems just that much easier to cut them back down to New Zealand's size, than use them to lift ours.

If they complain they are told where to go. If they want to help out they sometimes get the same reaction from those that have yet to grow by spreading their wings. But sometimes it's because their very success threatens incumbents who find them difficult not challenging.

You see it a lot in New Zealand where we are just not that good at embracing talent. It is a fundamental but very human absurdity that gets in the way of our progress as a nation.

Clinton got round the problem by turning himself into a one man NGO (non-governmental organisation) after leaving the presidency.

He probably could have won it again, notwithstanding the Lewinsky affair, if he was not constitutionally bound from seeking a third presidential term. Clinton would have overshadowed others - not to mention his own president - if he had opted for a run at a lesser political job.

Now he travels the world with President George Bush snr at the request of President George Bush junior, a roving presidential ambassador dealing with issues such as the Asian tsunami and even Hurricane Katrina, and, putting his own Clinton Foundation to work in the fight against HIV-Aids.

A far better option than the one Lange took.

He still rates highly on Kiwi adman Kevin Roberts' Lovemarks list. What people have said about Bill Clinton include: "I would vote for him again in a heart beat", "He truly cared", "A fascinating man", "History will judge him on his accomplishments not his peccadilloes".

That's the Clinton effect.

With some creative thinking, we should be able to come up with options that do not cut short the contribution our own people have yet to make in their prime. Just call it the Kiwi NGO.