Well, that went a lot better than expected. By nature, I'm a fairly positive sort of rooster but at the onset of 2017 it seemed reasonable to think that we were all going to die, or, at best, a few of us would be left behind in a screaming, radiated heap. Such was FOT, or Fear of Trump. But you're still here and I'm still here, and so is the planet, although come to think of it this drought we're having may well be a sign of global warming coming down fast and we're all going to die, fried.
Take a deep breath, and lay in some emergency supplies just in case. The first year in the Age of Trump had its genuinely frightening moments. There was a bit more to fear than FOT itself. Things looked pretty bad for a while there between Trump and the similarly raving Kim Jong-un — no, I'm not going to call it FOK — but the anticipated showdown with North Korea was all talk and Twitter.
"We live in challenging times for language," said Anthony McCarten, when I chatted with the Oscar-nominated screenwriter recently about his latest movie, Darkest Hour, based on Winston Churchill. McCarten — now likely the highest-earning New Zealand writer of all time; poor fellow, he must really miss the days when he worked as a cadet reporter at the Taranaki Daily News — has created a portrait of leadership during crisis. It includes Churchill's three famous speeches as Britain went to war. He quoted the journalist Edward R. Murrow: "Churchill mobilised the English language and sent it into battle."
Bill English cuddled kittens on the campaign trail. Photo / Mark Mitchell
What's Trump doing with the English language, other than regularly beating it senseless? It's possible to see all his threats and lies as something actually kind of reassuring. They're an act, a performance, nothing more. No shots are ever fired. Another movie, It, provides a metaphor for his presidency. I went to the screening at the WestCity mall in Henderson thinking It was going to be so terrifying that I might pass out before I'd got to the bottom of my Coke. I had the idea that It was going to be a movie for our times. The killer clown as Trump, doing weird and unspeakable things in the gutter ... But I was bored to sobs. I thought It sucked. There wasn't anything to worry about.
The two best words in the English language right now are false alarm. What the world needs right now are more suicide bombers as hopeless as the boob who gave himself some nasty burns in the New York subway this month. What the world needs right now — I feel somewhat light-headed as I prepare to finish this sentence, a little bit reckless — is Trump. Trump, who does nothing. POTUS, c/o the 13th hole at Mar-a-Lago.
American novelist George Saunders won the Man Booker award this year for fulfilling the requirement of that prize: writing something long and, in my view, terribly boring. His book, Lincoln in the Bardo, focused on a great US president. As such, his thoughts were sought on the current US President, and he wrote in the New Yorker of Trump's election to the White House, "I've never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my very lifetime, fail." The guy had a bad case of FOT. You can't blame him for that, but what's all this about the notion that America might one day fail? It's failed all over the world — Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan — and shortened quite a few lifetimes. American myopia. It's so naive that it's almost touching.
I prefer the more clear-eyed thoughts of another novelist. In his Spinoff review of Hillary Clinton's rather hapless memoir What Happened, Wellington novelist and essayist Danyl Mclauchlan wrote of the first year in the Age of Trump, "It's been fairly awful, though it could be much, much worse. I think the real threat is still ahead of us, in the future: someone who channels the same rage Trump tapped, that loathing and contempt for the elite financial and political class that Clinton represents, but then uses their power instead of squandering it golfing and tweeting."
Cheer up, it'll get worse. Right now, though, it's all good. These are the halcyon days. The lesson of 2017 is that you can afford to enjoy 2018. The world is a dangerous place. In New Zealand, an ageing journalist with a bad heart could challenge the leaders of the main political parties to a game of table tennis, and the majority showed up — and duly got their ass kicked. I knew that the series would provide a unique psychological x-ray of the leaders. Table tennis, more than any other sport, even more than chess, reveals the person who resides inside our projected self. But it came as a surprise that the series had such an obvious influence on the election result. Jacinda Ardern had the guts and good humour to sign up for a match. Bill English, murky and afraid as ever, chickened out. The people saw, and voted.
The official line the media has taken is that English was an awesome campaigner. I don't know why the media thinks that. I went on the road with English and thought he was a flop. It seemed evident at National's campaign launch, in deepest, bleakest Henderson; it seemed evident in the golden plains of the Manawatu and Canterbury, where he was even flatter than the earth.
At one stop he launched the opening of the new justice centre in Christchurch. A few days earlier he'd met representatives from Whanau Ora in Palmerston North, and was struck by the progress that could be made, one person at a time, in reducing crime. The idea stayed with him, seemed to give him a sense of purpose, and he talked ceaselessly about it in subsequent stops on the campaign trail. It reached a zenith at the justice centre launch. He said — out loud, to adult human beings — that he liked to think of the day when there would be no need for a justice centre, that its freshly built courtrooms would be empty, crime would be a thing of the past, oh and PS you might say he's a dreamer but he hoped one day the world would live as one.
Jacinda Ardern signed up for a table tennis match. Photo / Nick Reed
There was such a phoniness to English. "His to lose, and he lost it," wrote Spinoff commentator Simon Wilson, who has now joined the Herald. "Sorry, everyone says he ran a great campaign, but that's National spin and it's just not true."
English didn't lose it single-handedly, though. The big social issues of 2017 — homelessness, child poverty, the price of houses and avocados — helped to turn the tide against a Government that could manage a profit but cared less about the gap between rich and poor than trying to narrow the gap between rich and super-rich.
One time on the campaign trail I was with English at the AUT Millennium centre on the North Shore. Three women staged a protest and confronted him with angry placards — something to do with factory farming. The DPS gathered around him and shooed him downstairs. His chief press secretary, Julie Ash, barred the door to the stairwell. I stood there dithering. She glared at me. "Are you with them," she said, waving a dismissive arm at the protesters, "or us?"
It was a good question. It was the same one that English asked of the electorate. Ultimately the vote was decided by Winston Peters but it would never have got to that point without the sheer numbers of people who said they were with Labour and the Greens and wanted an end to National rule.
It was the same need for change that put an end to Labour rule in 2005. Back then, National's young, amiable leader, John Key, offered something new and fascinating — happiness. "He advertised a calming presence," I wrote at the time. These were some of Ardern's virtues, too, in 2017. People felt good around her. I saw it on the campaign trail in Auckland, then down the line in Hamilton and Tokoroa, everywhere the same thing — the epicentre of Jacindamania was purely that people felt happy.
On the final day of the campaign, I took the bus from my house in Te Atatu to watch Ardern walk through WestCity mall in Henderson. I wanted to see the last traces of Jacindamania. It was there as she entered by the bakery selling Mrs Higgins Cookies. It was there as she posed for selfies with adorable children and adoring grandmas. It was there as she walked past the escalators that led to the cinema where I watched It, the Donald Trump movie.
Soon enough she would be chatting with him on the phone and meeting him in person. Apparently, the talks went well. The worst that happened is he may have mistaken her for Justin Trudeau's wife. It's amazing he didn't mistake Justin Trudeau for Justin Bieber.
But it was just a chance to meet and greet, nothing more. Ardern returned to New Zealand, where she has more important things to attend to on our behalf in 2018. It is likely to be chaotic to witness — that's the nature of Labour — but there's every chance that some good will be done.
As for Trump, he no doubt returned to the sands of Mar-a-Lago, to the intricacies of the 13th hole. Let's just hope he stays there. The safety of the planet depends on Trump having less important things to do than meddle with it.
