John Armstrong: Peer eye for straight guy

How do you turn Don Brash into a politician without turning him into just another politician? That is the riddle confronting the National Party as it watches its poll rating spiral downwards in a pre-Christmas tailspin. There is not a lot of time left to come up with a solution.

National has weeks rather than months to transform its leader into someone consistently able to grab the political agenda by the scruff of the neck and wrest the initiative from Helen Clark in the countdown to next September's election.

Brash needs to dive in the deep end - and stop paddling in the shallows.

But in getting him out of the doldrums, National must avoid resorting to cheap headlines and cheaper stunts, which would only end up diminishing his authority and credibility - his two biggest assets.

The party had little choice but to take on the chin the drubbing Labour gave it in Parliament after this week's Herald-DigiPoll survey, in which it slumped to 20 percentage points behind its main rival.

National has to take a deep breath and carry on implementing its strategy of getting Brash to talk in the media more frequently while the party belatedly starts to release policy.

The bottom line, however, is that National cannot begin election year in the fashion it is ending this one - totally poll-axed.

The snowballing pressure of bad polls will tempt Brash and his strategists to contemplate increasingly desperate means to break the cycle - and risk tarnishing his image. The danger is that he ends up being just another politician in the political herd.

That risk was apparent this week with his last-minute u-turn on the Civil Union Bill.

Given the general commotion surrounding the bill's passage through Parliament, Brash probably got away with this switch without too much damage.

But he is not in the same position as other MPs whose chequered track record, flouting of principle and mind-changing capacity is seen by voters as simply par for the course.

Brash's brand distinction resides in him being a breath of fresh air in the fetid atmosphere of parliamentary politics. He cannot suddenly adopt the chameleon-like mannerisms of the building's other inhabitants without losing some of that appeal.

Yet at the same time, as leader he is inexorably drawn into having to accept the kind of compromises that clash with his belief structure, whether they be this week's other somersault - National formally signing up to the Cullen super fund - or voting against the Civil Union Bill.

A week before the debate on that legislation, Brash emphatically declared he would not "prostitute" his conscience and vote against the bill in Parliament just to win votes outside the House.

On Thursday, he voted against the bill's second reading on the grounds that the measure had become so divisive it should be put to a public referendum.

Fair enough - except for the minor technicality that such a referendum requires the insertion of an enabling clause at the committee stage after the second reading.

Brash's argument was spurious. Voting against the second reading effectively meant he was voting down a referendum.

His behaviour was expedient. His vote was not cast according to his conscience, but in the hope of belatedly securing some kudos from moral conservatives and others uncomfortable with Labour's perceived political correctness, while heading off New Zealand First's incursion into traditional National territory.

The episode illustrates the difficulty someone like Brash was always going to have in turning National's fortunes around, despite hitting the jackpot early on with his Orewa speech on race.

He is a liberal trying to appeal to conservatives. He is a reformist free-marketer in an age of economic moderation. He must pull National to the centre when his natural inclination is to pull National to the right.

This conflict between where Brash would like to take the party and where he has to take it may explain why National has largely lost the plot since he delivered his law-and-order speech in July.

That was easy stuff. And so was the Orewa speech's focus on special treatment for Maori.

The determination of other policy stances has been a lot slower. That may not be entirely Brash's fault, but he is the leader.

The risk now is that in returning constantly to a topic that has worked for him before, such as race, Brash ends up looking desperate.

He will also have found that running the National Party is not like managing the Reserve Bank. The latter functions on strict hierarchy. The former is a collection of cabals, cliques and conspiracies that requires regular injections of morale to function cohesively.

It is Brash's job to provide the requisite leadership, particularly in Parliament.

He is dismissive of the daily cut-and-thrust in the chamber, arguing that its proceedings are largely irrelevant to most voters and he is better off speaking to audiences outside the capital.

There is truth in that. But Parliament is the one place where political opponents regularly square off against one another.

It is a barometer of who is up and who is down. It is the place that builds perceptions of who is doing well and who is struggling - with special attention paid to the battle between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

Those perceptions seep into the national consciousness sooner or later, shaping voter attitudes, which can become hard to shift.

Brash's obvious discomfort in the House means National is going into combat with one hand tied behind its back.

But his advisers have clearly opted to cut their losses, abandoning any hope that he can really cut it in Parliament. Brash's appearances are increasingly confined to carefully scripted, set-piece speeches to contain the embarrassment.

National will instead take considerable heart from television appearances such as this week's one on Kim Hill's Face to Face, where Brash looked confident, composed and not at all on the defensive.

But such opportunities are limited. And Clark will not debate with Brash head-to-head on television until the election campaign begins. She has no need to. She is under no pressure to do so.

That leaves a vacuum. Somehow, Brash has to fill it.