But Labour has a giant pin set aside for just such occasions and they got it out and burst our bubble.
Andrew Little told Australians he pitied them if that's what their new leader wants.
That was the third time he missed the chance to display a little magnanimity or leadership in the past fortnight. If he carries on like this, it will be as hard to vote for his party in 2017 as it was in the last election a year and a week ago.
Possibly his biggest mistake though was playing politics with the flag referendum. Forget what Labour was saying publicly about wanting to get Red Peak on the ballot. They didn't want that.
Sure, Red Peak being included was egg on Key's face. The Prime Minister tried so hard to ignore it. But, it would have been much, much better for Labour if Red Peak was excluded. That way, more of us would have got angry, packed a tanty and voted instead to keep the current flag. It'd be a whole carton of eggs on Key's face if his precious flag change failed.
That's why Labour mucked around and that's why the Greens and National outmanoeuvered it. Labour was more interested in embarrassing the Prime Minister than making sure we hand the right flag on to our grandkids.
Left-wing voters have every reason to feel frustrated with this party. There are no real policies, which is fair enough given it doesn't want to show its hand two years out from the next election. But in the absence of policies, there's no hope. There's just negativity.
How do you turn a story about panda bears into something negative? Here's how.
It sounds increasingly like our biggest trading partner might hook us up with a couple of cute - but admittedly expensive to keep - YouTube favourites.
If you're Little, you don't use this as a chance to show your sense of humour and crack a few panda puns or display your understanding of the tourism the bears generate.
Instead, you say there are better things to spend money on. There are always better things.
Little will have done his research. He'll know about panda diplomacy. He'll know getting pandas from China is the equivalent of a diplomatic BFF note.
He might even have read about the panda curse. He might have found out that a number of world leaders were forced out of office not long after their pandas arrived. It happened to Richard Nixon, Britain's Edward Heath and Japan's Kakuei Tanaka.
Little should have been more enthusiastic about the pandas. Because the way he's shooting everything down, he may well need the pandas to help him beat Key.
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