John Armstrong: Brash's lack of experience turns pitfalls into pratfalls

It should be of some worry to the National Party that Don Brash's attempted hit on the Prime Minister yesterday saw him come close to landing one on himself instead.

Having called a press conference to berate the Prime Minister for playing games with the election date, Dr Brash found himself facing the same charge of playing games with the release of National's tax policy.

It may be that Dr Brash's challenge to Helen Clark to name the day strikes a chord with some voters, although it is hard to see why.

No one outside Parliament is getting too fussed over the date.

It is of more note that in their rush to set the political agenda and make the leader appear decisive, Dr Brash and his advisers have for the second time in as many weeks failed to anticipate how a line of attack might boomerang on National.

While that does not matter in the pre-campaign limbo, it will in the campaign proper, where mistakes are magnified out of all proportion.

The other example of Dr Brash being caught out was his exclusion of gays from his definition of "mainstream" New Zealanders - an exclusion he was backing away from within hours of making it.

Again, he did not seem to anticipate being asked which minorities were not "mainstream" despite facing a similar question at the conclusion of the National Party conference the day before.

Again, that oversight did not matter, partly because National is on a roll. When parties are on such rolls, such lapses are ignored by voters.

One view within National is that the public is willing to give Dr Brash quite a lot of latitude because his shortfall in political experience is more than compensated for by him being hugely in credit in terms of trust and honesty as a result of his lengthy tenure as governor of the Reserve Bank.

This is why National has been reluctant to risk devaluing Dr Brash's credibility as a straight shooter by having him indulge in political stunts.

But no leader can escape the pressures to be overtly political.

And here the experience Dr Brash does not have definitely counts.

His claim the public was sick of the Prime Minister's game-playing and "spin" over the election date prompted the inevitable questions from reporters.

Surely it was only National's election planning that was in a spin and that it was perfectly normal for prime ministers to keep their opponents guessing?

Neither could Dr Brash deny that National was delaying the detail of its proposed tax cuts.

A politician of more experience would have brushed aside such questions with a smoother patter.

It is still part of Dr Brash's attraction that he did not and got sidetracked instead.

However, only now are voters starting to weigh up whether he can make the huge leap into the job of prime minister.

Labour will consequently highlight his inexperience, while mistakes in the campaign will invite questions about his political judgment.

While he will make up for them in other ways, Dr Brash is likely to make some mistakes in the coming weeks - especially if his colleagues keep failing to anticipate the traps the relative novice can fall into.