KEY POINTS:
So, under National, violent young crims will be off to boot camp. But not the kind of boot camp where discipline-obsessed sergeant-majors yell insults at exhausted recruits endlessly square-bashing in the noon day sun.
No, the John Key version would take the "effective elements" of army training and combine those with "the most advanced expertise" that those working in the field of youth rehabilitation can offer.
It begins to sound less like boot camp more like fluffy slipper camp.
Joking aside, the "fresh start" initiative outlined in Key's state of the nation speech on Tuesday is the perfect example of why the National leader's "compassionate conservatism" is proving so potent for the party - and so difficult for Labour to rebut.
Amidst applause from the right for his plan to dispatch recidivist young offenders to army camps, Key simultaneously softened the concept to sell it to the many more voters in the centre of the political spectrum who might be worried National is planning to resurrect the more torrid aspects of the long-dead compulsory military training scheme.
When it comes to law and order, Key is something of a hawk. But rather than swing hard to the right with his youth crime package - as most conservative politicians would have done - he followed his centrist instincts.
His speech was riddled with passages where he talked tough one moment and then sounded moderate the next.
Thus, the parents of wayward kids who do not comply with Youth Court orders to attend parenting courses will be fined - as will their children. However, National will always offer offenders a second chance to straighten out their lives. And so on.
It could have all turned to mush. Key could have come a cropper in simultaneously attempting to satisfy those on the right and those in the centre.
However, Key's current popularity puts him in the same happy space Winston Peters once occupied. Sometimes voters hear only what they want to hear from a leader and blithely ignore what they don't like. Key is in that fortunate position. Helen Clark isn't. As someone who has been around much longer, she inevitably polarises people. Those who don't like her hear what they want to hear even though she may not have said it.
That has been the case with Clark's ambitious policy to keep teenagers in school or some form of training until they are 18. It more than answers National's criticism that Labour is failing to make the reforms necessary to lift medium-term economic performance - and makes National's own "youth guarantee" scheme look rather timid.
Yet, people have preferred to focus on the potential negatives of Clark's proposal, predicting classroom chaos as bored 17-year-olds get increasingly desperate to quit school.
In contrast, although boot camps are of questionable effectiveness, Key's idea has gone down well because the current moral panic provoked by a surge of homicides and violent assaults makes people want to believe such camps will work.
The reaction to Clark's proposal should worry Labour as a pointer to the difficulty it will have selling its message in election year.
Labour's more immediate priority is bursting Key's bubble. It is tying itself in knots instead.
Labour paints Key as Ruth Richardson in drag - someone who will reveal his true colours when he becomes prime minister and start pursuing National's "hidden agenda".
But Labour also portrays him as someone who does not seem to stand for anything.
He cannot be both these things.
Labour has offered no evidence that Key is some New Right acolyte. Labour assumes that because he was a merchant banker, he must be one and that voters will make that assumption too. But Key as an ideologue does not square with his unashamed pragmatism.
He is not only capable of "swallowing dead rats" - the process of neutralising issues where National has taken an unpopular stance but done so out of principle - Key feeds on such rodents with alacrity. Asked why National was now following Labour in executing an about turn on interest charges on student loans when he had previously said National would fight Labour's decision "with every bone in our bodies", Key simply replied that it was because National lost the last election.
It was the honest answer. Key accepts elections are won and lost in the centre - and National should not give Labour the luxury of occupying any more of that territory than can be helped.
The scale of Key's pragmatism does beg the question of what he really stands for, however.
Clark also pitches for the centre vote. But - like most leaders - she possesses a set of fundamental beliefs which drive what she does as Prime Minister. Key has the naked ambition to want the job. It has not been clear what he wants to do if and when he gets it.
It is possible that his transition from state house child to rich merchant banker has been of such contrast he has not developed deeply-fixed ideological views.
Such a flexible disposition may be attractive to the bulk of voters who do not not want an ideologue. While there is a mood for a change of management, there is no groundswell for a change in the country's direction. In such an environment, pragmatism is very much a virtue.
Key's leadership has witnessed a marked softening of National's hardnosed image. Key looks to be a true conservative, rather than a radical conservative like Jenny Shipley. True conservatives largely conserve the changes that Labour governments make, rather than overturning them. While staunch on individual responsibility, they are not uncaring about people's misfortune.
Key has thus filled what for years has been a yawning gap in National's psyche, marching the party to the centre just as Clark has been shifting leftwards slightly in order to refresh Labour's brand.
The more he occupies territory to which Clark sought claim, the more difficult it will be for Labour to demonise him.
To that end, Clark this week dragged up Richardson's 1991 Mother of All Budgets, claiming the social dysfunction caused by its slashing of the welfare state was responsible for the current generation of violent youth offenders.
That may be valid, but it made Clark look like she is fixated with the past, especially for the third of the voting population with no recollection of Richardson's budget.
Key's response is to say National's unrestrained free market ideology is of the past and he is only concerned with the future. The message is National will build on what Labour has done, only better and faster.
Truth be told, Labour is not really sure what to do about Key. But if he can keep projecting himself as the safe moderate conservative, Labour will be well on the way to being crushed on election day.
