Fran O'Sullivan: Why Key should stop playing Mr Nice Guy

The "Mr Nice Guys" like Prime Minister John Key - and US President Barack Obama - who have soared high on the basis of personal popularity and feel-good vibes - are now finding out the hard way thatthere is more to making a good political hamburger than mere sizzle.

If Key does not want to preside over a one-term Government, he must set about constructing a crucial point of difference by starting to act as his nation's CEO instead of the prime political firefighter who repeatedly rides to the rescue to save his Government from fiascos caused by his own lax political management.

Less than one year into his reign as New Zealand Prime Minister, Key's popularity - like that of his party's - is rocketing high in the opinion polls.

Like Obama, Key has succeeded in one critical area: changing "the vibe" around his nation's capital. Like Obama he is perceived as a Mr Nice Guy in large part because he is not his predecessor: Helen Clark in Key's case, or George W. Bush (Obama).

But much of their respective popularity is also due to the fact neither politician has yet accomplished the type of substantive policy changes that require them to display virtuosity by making deals that sustain broad coalitions, tread firmly on the toes of vested interests, and expend political capital with no guarantee it will be replenished.

In Obama's case his career in the US Senate was too short for him to have learnt how to marshal cross-party support on defining legislation in the way that his own Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed while serving as a senator for New York.

Obama is now subject to tactical gridlock on his healthcare programme; other issues like Afghanistan and climate change are mired in controversy.

In Washington last week one senior Democratic Congressional official told me Obama's foreign policy team sees New Zealand "in safe hands ... they can do business there". Key was "young, fresh, and not a typical, machine politician".

Not-too-distant a description in fact from the words that Key himself used when he told the Financial Times last year he was a bit like Obama: "Not institutionalised in Wellington ... I had 18 years in the commercial world and I will be quite pragmatic."

It is a political truism the crucial strengths that underline a leader's popularity are also their weaknesses.

Key - like his alter ego - is now in desperate need of the vital machine skills to ensure his Government does make progress on controversial flagship policies. He could start with the obvious lack of political management within his own office.

It is risible that Key's Cabinet was blindsided by Maori TV's bid for free-to-air rights to screen Rugby World Cup games in 2011. Irrespective of whether TVNZ had dropped the ball, there is no way Maori Party leader Pita Sharples should have been allowed to redirect $3 million of taxpayer funds from a Maori development fund to this purpose without a Cabinet say-so.

That one episode alone should be a signal to Key that he needs to shake up his own office and put in place a coalition manager - as Helen Clark did with Heather Simpson - so the detail is managed while he is off tripping around the world cementing New Zealand's foreign relations. If that means finding a new role for his personable chief of staff Wayne Eagleson, so be it.

It goes further: the fiasco also demonstrates that three ministers in Key's Cabinet - Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully, his associate Gerry Brownlee and Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman - have not got all the ground-work in place to ensure the rugby event is a success and does produce an economic legacy for New Zealand.

Given Key's hope to leverage the event to boost his party's popularity at the 2011 election, this is an astonishing lapse. But that is just a sideshow compared to the mismanagement of two defining pieces of legislation: amendments to the emissions trading platform and changes to Accident Compensation entitlements.

Cabinet Minister Nick Smith is making a pig's arse of shepherding through both issues. Business is squealing over the lack of time to make submissions to the climate change select committee and Smith failed to get the Government's support partners - Act and the Maori Party - on side before moving on ACC.

If Key isn't thinking Cabinet reshuffle by now he needs his head read. He could start with dropping the Mr Nice Guy portfolio of tourism and get the players in place who can orchestrate significant investment here so that the gap with Australia starts to close.

Obama has had to face down ridicule through the premature award of the Nobel Prize. Key does not face this handicap. It is time for him to get to work.