Tracey Barnett: Nothing so fine as a man who knows how to listen

It's time for you to read about my mother's sexual fantasy life. Years ago my mother accompanied a friend to the Clinton White House. Though nearing her 50th wedding anniversary in what many would consider a damned fine marriage, we swear she wanted to slip her hotel key into Clinton's hand as she shook it.

"Jeez, get a grip Mom," I feigned disgust upon her return but was curious. "That is one sexy man," she intoned, staring into the horizon. She was bitten. She met a man who listens.

You heard right. When Clinton came to New Zealand, the bitter and twisted Kiwi press had a similar reaction. They went all Doris Day-ish around Clinton - a reference my mother can understand.

Even within Clinton's cabinet, his political charisma or art of seduction (depending on whom you ask) had a notorious g spot. He was an interminably superb listener, a man who thrived on discourse - perhaps the polar opposite of the Helen and Don show we saw in the last election.

Brit Hume in the National Review said, "He gives others his full attention and responds with an impressive grasp of their views and a sense that, even if he doesn't agree, he understands their position and respects it. He seems deeply to believe that if the right people, with the right attitude, can be gathered in the right room, there is no problem beyond solution."

Admit it. It's hard not to read that description and wish that would describe your boss/client/spouse/prime minister. Forget about Clinton's politics and peccadilloes, why does this assessment sound so novel and attractive? Listening is a forgotten political art, getting zippo respect outside of the "Envision World Peace" crowd. In what may be my all-time favourite bumper sticker response that reflects today's inattentive intention - "Envision Whirled Peas" says it all.

The only people whose curriculum offers warm and fuzzy listening pointers are counsellors, religious leaders and doctors - who today interrupt patients, on average, only 20 seconds into an interview.

On national radio last week, Michael Cullen could barely get both syllables of "budget" out before he was hammered with statements disguised as questions. The man never finished a full sentence. As a radio listener, I had to grant him pity points. That does nothing for a newbie Kiwi's ability to learn about his policy. Broadcast journalism school must teach rottweiler = good, labrador = fired.

I hate to invoke the name of the Dalai Lama so soon after a Michael Cullen reference, but there is a middle path, Grasshopper. You can be a hard-hitting journo and still give your interviewee a fair voice. You can be a hard-hitting prime ministerial candidate and let your opponent make his case to the nearest full stop. You can argue with a colleague and not have to plant a flag in his heart at the end of it.

It feels we have moved from Aristotelian discourse to a societal domestic violence punch-up. Don't get me wrong, I like fireworks. I even get my ha-has in a good brouhaha, if the fight is fair. But interruption is just a fraction of our fractured listening woes. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink and The Tipping Point, recounts having an academic debate with hotshot economist Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics.

He told Time magazine, "Levitt got up and made his case. I got up and made mine. But halfway through, I glanced over at Levitt and had a realisation that I'm not sure I've ever had before with an intellectual opponent - that if I made my case persuasively and cogently enough, he would change his mind. He was, in other words, listening." That was the big surprise.

In depressing understatement, Gladwell says this is not a great moment for listeners in our society. "The public conversation is dominated by those whose minds are unalterably made up, and we have come to view the man or woman whose views remain steadfast, even in the face of overwhelmingly evidentiary assault, as a kind of moral hero. Those people are not heroes, of course. They're usually just stubborn."

Gladwell concludes, "Levitt reminds us that we owe a bigger debt to those with the humility to go wherever logic and discovery lead them." Think of it this way: Is anyone advising today's politicians that there is no sound of one hand clapping? You're more likely to slap your own face. I'm sure the Dalai Lama would have said that if he had thought of it first.

Today, my mother hangs her photo-op with Bill Clinton in her bedroom, right across from my father's side of the bed. In different respects, both men have earned their right to be there.

I'll keep shopping for my generation's political man or woman of engagement and hope that some day I, too, will have a photo I can hang over my bed with a caption that would read, "He made me feel I was heard." Talk about political fantasies.