KEY POINTS:
It is not in Winston Peters' nature to accept defeat gracefully. The concept is alien to a politician whose unrelenting combativeness has been one of his biggest strengths. Tireless argumentativeness, however, can equally be a major handicap on occasion.
The revelations surrounding the $100,000 donation from wealthy expatriate Owen Glenn are such an occasion. Rarely has Peters allowed his own vanity - manifest in his refusal to admit he got things so badly wrong - to take such precedence over the interests of his party.
He can lash out at the media in general, and the Herald in particular, all he likes. Doing so does not alter the facts of the case: that Peters initially denied he or NZ First had received any money from Glenn, only for that denial to turn out to be worthless.
Once he discovered he had benefited from Glenn's generosity - and his previous assurances had been contradicted - the smart move would have been to fess up to the mistake and show at least some contrition.
That would not have put an end to the matter. There are still questions surrounding the donation in terms of whether it should have been disclosed to electoral authorities and whether it should have been declared in the ministers' register of assets as a gift.
Still, an apology of sorts to the public might have cooled things and removed what is fast becoming a major obstacle to NZ First striking a firm and lasting rapport with the tens of thousands of voters it needs to win over to ensure its parliamentary survival.
But no. As usual, it is all guns blazing as Peters firstly and typically blames the media, and then endeavours to create a distraction by yesterday zeroing in on "immigrant crime" in yet another attempt to find a moral panic on which NZ First can ride back into Parliament.
It might work, but the evidence increasingly suggests otherwise. NZ First has not been gaining any boost from these sort of tactics because voters see them as designed to help the party out of a hole rather than dealing with the problem Peters is highlighting.
What is less in question is that Peters' bungling over the Glenn donation will prove costly to NZ First, if not now then during the election campaign just three months away.
The weekend saw NZ First celebrating its 15th birthday, the party having been founded by Peters to clean up politics and hold to account the two major parties which he claimed were hostage to big business interests through secret campaign donations.
No longer can Peters mount that high horse. He will be pilloried by the likes of Rodney Hide if he tries to do so during the leaders' debates on which election campaign fortunes can quickly turn.
NZ First was already on shaky ground with its refusal to pay back $158,000 to the public purse following the Auditor-General's ruling on the misspending of parliamentary funds for electioneering in 2005.
The handling of the Owen Glenn donation will be widely seen as more evidence that when it comes to party funding, NZ First is just as bad as other parties.
A vital element of the party's unique brand has been destroyed - largely by the actions of its leader.
One minor compensating factor is that neither Labour nor National will go after him either now or during the election campaign simply because they may need him as a coalition partner afterwards.
It is noteworthy that National's criticisms have been directed more at Helen Clark than Peters. Her refusal to even mildly scold Peters is being used by National to paint the Prime Minister as weak; that there are double standards in the way she treats Peters compared with her other ministers.
Unfortunately for Peters, though, the issues surrounding the Owen Glenn donation are pretty black and white despite his efforts to paint black as white.
Voters don't need other politicians to help them make a judgment. And outside the ever-diminishing ranks of the "Winston can do no wrong" brigade, their verdict is unlikely to be positive.
