KEY POINTS:
For John Key, winning or losing the election may now hang less on tax and more on his syntax.
When it comes to diction, Helen Clark's careful choice of language conveys calm, authority, security, control of what is going on around her, and an absence of self-doubt. All are essential attributes for a successful politician.
In contrast, Key's wretched interview on TVNZ's Breakfast summed up the National leader's verbally challenging week. His response to Paul Henry's first question contained around a dozen "ahs" and "you knows".
Hesitation from a politician suggests doubt. Hesitation suggests an inability to handle pressure. Hesitation suggests there is something to hide.
Hesitation is death.
Key got better. But so did Henry. There have been murmurings all year among National's opponents that the Breakfast co-host is too soft on Key during their weekly chats, a view inevitably given sustenance by the fact that Henry stood as a candidate for National in 1999.
Henry blew such perceptions out of the water on Wednesday morning.
He was scathing of the National leader's handling of inconsistencies regarding the size of his stake in Tranz Rail, the company which ran the railways in 2003 when Key's shareholding and his role as National's associate transport spokesman were in conflict.
For the second time in three days, Key was blindsided by TVNZ. He was caught off guard and stumbled badly when confronted on Monday with questions about the actual size of his previous shareholding.
Now he found himself being boxed around the ears in the normally sedate atmosphere of a breakfast television show.
Staring down the barrel of another 42 days of ever-intensifying media scrutiny on their boss before the votes are cast and counted, Key's media minders could be excused an attack of mild panic.
Key looked to be in desperate need of some media training. His answer instead is to pick himself up and throw himself back into the fray - but not before exhaustively analysing what went wrong, backed up with a gritted-teeth determination there be no repeat of such debacles. That is what he has always done. That is how he has got to the top.
National has learned two lessons from the Tranz Rail shambles: first, that media organisations fed information by Labour will attempt to ambush Key throughout the campaign, and second, that Labour isn't too fussy about what kind of information it uses to try to destroy voters' confidence in Key.
Since Helen Clark announced the date of the November 8 election, Labour, like an underfed pit-bull terrier, has constantly been in Key's face.
In those two weeks, Labour has successfully nailed down the election as being about trust. National wanted to define it in terms of change versus politics as usual. It may have missed the boat. National has so far failed to generate momentum. If it was waiting until the formal campaign starts, then it has been outsmarted.
National's defence is that it is deliberately not engaging with Labour. There is nothing in it for National to get into hypothetical arguments with Clark about body bags from Iraq.
National believes that the longer Labour's attacks on Key continue, the more likely they will backfire with voters. National intends to position Key above the fray and have him pushing positive messages. It is more than happy that Michael Cullen is leading the attack because its research shows the Finance Minster is a big turn-off with voters.
It is also relieved the issue surrounding Key's shareholding was a personal matter, not a policy one which would have seen Labour dragging out further potentially damaging claims of "hidden agendas".
National is also confident that Labour had been keeping the Tranz Rail material in reserve for some time, but was forced to use earlier than it wanted to in order to neutralise last Monday's privileges committee report on the Winston Peters' contempt case.
While Key's ability to hammer Labour for trusting Peters has been compromised by the Tranz Rail share episode, National believes any long-term damage will be minimal.
Unlike Peters, Key confessed to making a mistake. The story quickly died. People will soon forget it.
Unlike the Peters saga which refuses to die - to Labour's increasing cost.
Just what Parekura Horomia said to Pita Sharples in two phone calls before the privileges committee report being released remains in dispute.
But if Horomia was trying to twist the Maori Party's arm into siding with Labour and NZ First on the committee then he succeeded only in angering the potential post-election power broker.
If Horomia was - as he says - just innocently mentioning the privileges committee hearings in passing, then Sharples has either misunderstood the Maori Affairs Minister or is exploiting the two phone calls to put distance between the Maori Party and Labour.
That may be the agenda operating here. If the Maori Party wants to strike a deal with National after the election, then it needs to soften up the large portion of its constituency who give their party votes to Labour.
Judging from Sharples' comments on TVNZ 7's Leaders Interviews programme, that process is well under way. He said both Labour and National "did not have a clue" about the Treaty and only paid it lip service.
He refused to declare repeal of the foreshore and seabed legislation, entrenchment of the Treaty and the Maori seats as non-negotiable bottom lines.
He said the Maori Party's first priorities would be health, welfare and education. Neither did the Maori Party necessarily want ministerial roles inside a formal coalition because the party could end up being "drowned" without power or freedom to speak.
All this would have been music to Key's ears - if he hadn't heard it already - because it makes a deal much easier for National to negotiate.
Labour is also the loser from Peters' push for the Maori vote - the reason behind his attack on the Maori Party for not backing him in the privileges case.
Peters needs all the votes he can scrub together. Most of them coming from the Maori roll will have to come from Labour as that party won twice as many party votes in the Maori seats in 2005 as the Maori Party did.
All of this is good news for National at the end of a bad week for the party. Next week, it should start to stir into action, however.
No doubt, Paul Henry's wounding remark that Labour are "better politicians" will still be ringing in Key's ears. In the meantime, Key was able to restore some equilibrium by lashing Labour during Parliament's adjournment debate yesterday.
The irony was that in shouting to be heard, Key lost his voice. As they watched him gasp to his conclusion, his colleagues must have thought if only that had happened on Monday.
