Jay Kuten: Beware of political slip-ups

POLITICIANS like our old friend Chester Borrows seem to get stranger and stranger as time goes on.

Last week his column in the Chronicle on the hazards of public service came wrapped up in a metaphor I found so abstruse to be either indecipherable or unusually strained for its circumlocution.

It was all about his shared love of bananas with his 2-year-old grandson.

If he had intended by his slippery banana peel of a metaphor to say "you can't have your banana and eat it, too" he should have said that - or cake, the original object of that cliche.

The latter part of Mr Borrows' sermon focused on the inferred virtues of those who stand for office and the implicit vice of those whom he depicts as "rock throwers".

Mr Borrows seems to have a penchant of conflating critics and those who disagree with him with imagined violence - witness his fantasy description of the people who oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

As to his personal encounter with protesters here, it is the driver of a 2000lb car who has the greater power and the pedestrian the greater vulnerability.

I'm sure Mr Borrows doesn't need my civics lesson to know that opposition and debate are the lifeblood of democracy. Far from critics of his depiction as needing to "get the hell out of the way", there is a need for those active citizens who would hold the government to account.

And while all office-holders are not venal, so independent journalists take personal risks as well, investing much effort to find out the facts and the truth. We have only to look to Nicky Hager, sufficiently respected to be part of the international investigative group that published the Panama Papers, and his unwarranted encounters with police.

I agree with Chester that many who aspire to office do so from high motive. The trouble occurs often after election, when many become over-infatuated with themselves and forget the meaning of the master/servant relationship they've sworn to - of remaining answerable to the citizens.

The meaning of "public servant" is hard to discern from the actions of some members of Borrows' own party. One minister whose present circumstances are owed to having had public financial support has acted to prevent others from doing likewise.

When the Prime Minister says people are poor because of poor decisions they made and Mr Borrows seems to use similar language, they forget the necessity for deserved humility along with the need to recognise that luck plays almost as great a role as talent in anyone's success.

To think the opposite is to follow the fallacy of self-elevation to unsustainable heights and almost assured descent.

After all, as the great faux Chinese sleuth Charlie Chan put it: "Man who stands on slippery banana peel soon have hard landing."

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.