Most of these initiatives have conspired against corporate profitability - though they have been offset by benign economic conditions which have sedated consumers and producers alike.
But her dominant need in a second term will be continued firm corporate profitability and a strong economy. She needs that revenue to fund her ambitions for health and education. Both are underfunded by the standards of her party's and her supporters' aspirations.
That is why she has become enamoured with "economic transformation" and "innovation". But so far the transforming policy is skeletal. An acid test of a second term will be whether she can flesh those bones to boost business and economic growth.
There is a complication. The most likely post-2002 scenario is a minority Labour Anderton Government, wholly dependent on the Greens - without Winston Peters to provide erratic but valuable pick-me-ups when the Greens let the Government down.
Peters is under determined assault from National and a Labour Party which knows its chances of escaping Green clutches may depend on New Zealand First's absence from the next Parliament. And that will depend on eliminating Peters' 63-vote Tauranga margin because his party is most unlikely to clear the 5 per cent party-vote hurdle.
With New Zealand First out, Labour Anderton probably needs 2 per cent less in total for a majority than if New Zealand First is returned. Just 46 per cent is likely to do the trick. In 1999 Labour Alliance got 46.5 per cent.
Jim Anderton will be back because he will win Wigram. But, whether he leads the Alliance or some other grouping, the deep split in the Alliance has probably ensured him a low party vote and only a small contingent of MPs on his coat-tails.
That means greater Labour dominance of any second-term Labour Anderton arrangement than in this term. The Anderton group will essentially be a leftish wing of Labour, with little leverage.
And that means an even more dominant Clark. Hence the focus on what she might do. Might all that listening to business and economists bear policy fruit for business?
After all, Clark wants three terms to embed Labour as a normal party of government. If, as is likely on long-range economic projections, education and health remain on politically corrosive short rations through to 2005, a third term may evaporate in the face of a more competitive Bill English and a rebuilt National Party.
However, for 2003 the economy should tick over nicely enough to allow her to rest her economic policy case on "innovation" and Anderton's myriad assistance programmes - which will be too new to be judged a success or not. This is no recipe for boldness.
Moreover, if the Greens have real leverage in a second term, changes of the sort business wants will not be possible even if Clark wants them.
The Greens are a party of believers, and feel they have not been given their due in the first term.
* They fiercely oppose genetic modification and would vote out a Government which allowed commercialisation of genetically modified products after the present moratorium.
So the Greens may well stop GM in its tracks and push researchers overseas. That would strike at the heart of Clark's focus on biotechnology as one of the three "horizontally enabling sectors" supposed to lift our productivity and wealth.
* Greens oppose free trade, roads, asset sales and many measures business says would lift profitability and encourage investment.
* Greens would demand the Government's first-term green initiatives be pushed a lot further, with more regulation.
Clark, by contrast, is highly sensitive to middle New Zealand, which thinks the Greens "extreme". So tensions are likely to surface, which Clark will need to manage with skill. Voters punish disunity.
Placating the Greens is likely to attenuate recognition of business needs in economic policy.
But what if Clark has a majority? She will have huge political capital available, if she wants, to invest in assertive, far-reaching and even bold policy innovations, not only in research, investment and "talent" policies, but in some of today's no-go areas such as tax, spending and regulation.
She has proved adaptable in office, reversing (officially) out of "closing the gaps", firming on law and order, restraining her more politically correct ministers and going to war in Afghanistan, all to soothe middle New Zealand, as have the first-term re-regulation and social initiatives. But she has also became far more a free-trader than she was in opposition.
So might a majority second term unveil a more flexible Clark on economic policy? A clue will lie in how much the Kyoto implementation is softened and slowed over the next few months - and the signs are that she has softened it considerably.
For now she has left space for National and ACT to differentiate themselves on economic policy. ACT is well differentiated - and is expected back in Parliament.
National's task is more complex. It must try to regain the centre and bury its "extremist" image to compete with Labour for the deciding voters in middle New Zealand. But it also has to recover business support and so must push business-friendly policies.
Such a balancing act looks beyond National this time round as Clark rides luck and a contented populace to the polls.
Might her ride be upset? Potential destabilisers are: health; strikes, notably of secondary teachers at exam and election time; a serious economic downturn; memories of tax rises; a politically correct outrage; too much of Tariana Turia; a noisy coalition against Kyoto that triggers public unease.
All those factors are likely to slice votes from Clark's vast lead. But not enough to lose her the Treasury benches - at least not foreseeable at this point.
*
ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz
