KEY POINTS:
Why is the National Party being so coy about its election campaign consultants, Crosby Textor? The Australian firm is regularly hired for conservative campaigns in Australia and Britain, where its strategic subtlety has been impressive.
In the last British election the Conservative Party came from nowhere to a position where it will probably win the next election. Late in the 2005 campaign, when they were making little headway despite Prime Minister Tony Blair's unpopularity over Iraq, the Tories suddenly departed from the conventional optimism that parties like to project.
Their leader declared they were "two goals down at halftime", which in soccer parlance means you are just about out of the game. The declaration was designed to let Labour voters know they could safely express their discontent over Iraq with a vote for the left-wing Liberal-Democratic Party. Enough of them did so to make the result much closer than it might have been. Crosby Textor? Probably.
Most of the commentary on that Conservative campaign concentrated on immigration concerns that the Tories had exploited beyond a point the commentators thought decent. That was attributed to the consultants too, probably correctly.
"Dog whistle" issues - those that play to fears and prejudices far deeper than the subject of debate - are part of the political tactician's stock in trade. Right now anything that suggests an asset sale is a dog-whistle issue for the Labour campaign.
Last week, the union movement accused National of planning to expose ACC to competition again. The prospect of insurance companies competing to provide accident compensation cover for employers is not very scary in itself, but both Labour and the National tacticians know that the subject would reawaken resentments of privatisation and economic reform.
Nobody should be surprised, or particularly outraged, if the consultants have schooled National to avoid the subject. If they are astute, they will also ensure the party does not rule it out. Once in office, parties invariably do things in the public interest that would not be popular in an election campaign. Labour gave no hint at the last election that it was going to ban smacking or smother political speech with financial restrictions and red tape.
It is naive to imagine election campaigns are candid affairs. Voters have to keep a keen ear to what the campaigns are not saying as much as what they choose to say. Assessments have to be made on inference, intuition, common sense and trust, as well as the performance of the protagonists under criticism and constant public scrutiny for several intense weeks.
It is no wonder serious contenders engage consultants. So why does National not come clean about them? Probably because consultants of all kinds try to stay in the background. They want the client to be seen and heard, not themselves.
Professional as this may be, there comes a point where confidentiality hurts the client more than it helps him. That point is reached when a political opponent attacks the consultant. Crosby Textor should permit National leader John Key to admit the well known: that it has advised National for the past three elections or more and will be doing so again.
It will be obvious, anyway, when he uses the lines that only a professional in message control would prescribe. Ultimately, a leader worth his salt applies a grain of it to all the advice he commissions. The advice will be one consideration among many. It falls to him sometimes to balance tactical good sense against what he feels confident he can do. It is the capacity to take good advice and go beyond it when necessary that spells leadership.
