John Roughan: A disappointed image - but not a hypocrite

Don Brash, inflation buster, governor of monetary constancy, policy puritan, poor, artless innocent in tactical politics, must not surrender to the reptiles who do some dirty work and slither back out of sight when it is done.

Brash may not be the man to lead National back to power - his antediluvian view of the Treaty disqualifies him in my book - but he is a man of proven public superiority to the parliamentary pond scum who have aired his private problems.

He appears to have committed the cardinal sin of public life: a serious affair of the heart.

How can we be fairly sure it is, or was, serious? Because we think we know Brash. He is not Bill Clinton. Ironically, that probably makes it worse for him.

Clinton proved that an electorate as conservative as America can tolerate a merely seedy affair, even in the Oval office, if it seems in character. All the while the Republicans in Congress were pressing for Clinton's impeachment, most Americans seemed only amused by the President's exploits with an intern much too young, and by his attempts to wriggle out of the embarrassment. His polls hardly suffered.

You can probably think of one or two politicians in this country whose personalities are such that you would not be astonished if their personal lives were spectacularly libidinous, and the discovery would not change your opinion of their political qualities very much.

But Don Brash is not one of those. Rightly or wrongly, he is regarded as a solid, dependable citizen - not dull, as too many commentators initially tried to dismiss him, but earnest, excitable, dedicated to the national interest and too honest, on the whole, for political safety.

So people may be disappointed to discover his personal affairs are not pristine. Whether that discovery has made much difference to his and National's political prospects is moot.

I suspect it would not count for much at the next election but that it will be the pretext for a leadership change the National Party would have made anyway, before 2008.

It is common to think the cardinal sin in public life is no longer sex but hypocrisy. When Don Brash, amid re-kindled rumours of the affair, announced on Wednesday that his marriage was in difficulty, news media went to their archives looking for the quote that would establish hypocrisy. Anything on the sanctity of marriage would do.

Nobody could turn up very much. Having told the country how his first marriage ended in his affair with his present wife, Brash has been careful with his comments on the general subject.

More careful than he should have needed to be. He followed the dictate of his heart; there ought to be nothing dishonourable in that. Equally, there is honour in deciding to preserve a marriage, as Brash said he was doing.

News hounds looking for hypocrisy are barking up the wrong tree. The right tree is called public image, a specimen that has not always been deliberately cultivated. Brash has not claimed any particular moral heights for himself but if audiences have formed that impression of him there is not much he can do about it.

A French electorate can deal sensibly with affairs of the heart, but politics in the British tradition is uncomfortable with any discussion of affairs of the subject. That, more than decorum, I think, is the reason the messy personal lives of MPs are seldom aired in Parliament.

Parliamentary life is almost designed to poison marriages. Most MPs spend half of their week away from home, whether they domicile themselves in the capital or an electorate. When in Wellington they spend long days, and late nights frequently, in the self-contained hothouse that is Parliament Buildings.

It is a heady place to be. Everything of national importance is likely to wash up there at some stage, and everything that happens is grist for the great contest of power that fascinates and stimulates most of those within.

They work cheek by jowl with competitors, conspirators and courtiers who come from the departments and business lobbies to bend the ear of present or prospective governments. The whole of Wellington seems caught in a vortex around the Beehive.

It is extremely seductive and anybody with an ounce of political interest can hardly bear to leave. It is not only defeated MPs who suffer withdrawal when the time comes. Former party office staff and press gallery reporters pine for the excitement and reminisce fondly when they meet. It has been 20 years since I worked there and I still feel at home when I visit.

It is a place where rumour easily circulates and it is surprising more does not erupt in the legal safety of the debating chamber. Rumour, fortunately, is not usually reported, for it is more than likely to be wrong.

The Brash bombshell would have been little more than a minor detonation in a low-circulation weekly paper had he not decided to make his announcement. A fine career must not end this way.

A year ago today he led National from nowhere to one seat short of winning the election. Even so, I doubt that he could have taken the party into power next time.

The country does not change an established government unless it is offered something new and Brash, though he has not been in a previous cabinet, is not something new. He was too much a part of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s to present a fresh face to the electorate now.

When he goes I hope it is with his dignity intact. His record at the Reserve Bank deserves it, his guileless nature allows it, and ultimately he will find few willing to decry him for the calls he has answered from his human heart.