Superstar?! Dear God!

Rikkitic:

 

GV27:

 

I feel a lot of her success on the world stage is to do with a handful of incidents that are extremely high-profile, but overall she has led an ineffective government that was elected on a unrealistic campaign platform of policies their team neither had the inclination or capability to deliver. I find this infuriating given their willingness to attack the previous government for inaction and neglect, only to spend three years dithering and walking away from their policy platforms, while migration continued, house prices rose and key infrastructure projects were deferred.

 

Having said that, I do like her. I also liked Bill English. I'm not really sure that Kiwis would have been that much worse off under him though. My biggest frustration is the missed opportunity and the feeling that NZ will still facing the same problems, writing the same reports and not actually doing anything about them in a decade's time. We should expect better, and I believe Labour's lack of talent and the media's desire to softball Ardern questions means we won't get it. 

 

Re: her remarks, it appears the Beehive keeps transcripts of the actual conferences, not the original speeches, so we will never know whether she misspoke or it was written into her speech. 

 

 

These are fair points and I agree to an extent. Jacinda Ardern is a superstar. Unfortunately, most of the material she has to work with is not. 

 

This is such a lazy argument. You don't get to take credit for things that go right but ignore the things that don't. Saying "its hard" but then saying someone is a superstar doesn't mesh.

Ardern has a lot of significant strengths. She has a real gift for portraying leadership, iconic imagery and communication. She's really good at that stuff. This is supported by a very well planned and executed media strategy.

Her international image is a well cultivated one - for example she doesn't grant long form interviews to domestic press however does do this for international press. From what I have read she is significantly less accessible to the media than previous PMs. This is clearly an international trend but it's hardly the most transparent government ever.

She also has significant weaknesses in management and holding people to account. This has been repeated ad nauseum by her government. Kiwibuild, Light Rail, Child Poverty, Open Government, the list goes on. It's just farcical to "take responsibility" but there are no consequences.

networkn:

 

Superstar?! Dear God!

 

You rang?

networkn:

 

Superstar?! Dear God!

 

You're no fun at all. You are far too easily triggered.

Handle9:

 

This is such a lazy argument. You don't get to take credit for things that go right but ignore the things that don't. Saying "its hard" but then saying someone is a superstar doesn't mesh.

 

Nothing lazy at all. She is a stellar performer in a very small pond. That limits what she can do.

Rikkitic:

 

You are obsessing over one word. Just accept that you don't like her.

 

Both sorts of posts are frankly equally pointless. There are some here that pathologically dislike this government (and I think your interlocutor isn't one of those; I suspect you also agree). But equally there are some who seem to treat this thread as some kind of personal blog where their unabashed adulation for Ardern or the government just pours out. Neither posting style really facilitates any rational or informed discussion.

You may have a point. I am an unabashed fan. And I agree with your assessment of my worthy adversary. But it is worth recalling that JA took a dispirited, losing party without a chance in hell of gaining power and single-handedly transformed it into a winner. She went up against a capable, far more experienced opponent and wiped the floor with him. If that isn’t a stellar performance, I don’t know what is.

Rikkitic:

 

You may have a point. I am an unabashed fan. And I agree with your assessment of my worthy adversary. But it is worth recalling that JA took a dispirited, losing party without a chance in hell of gaining power and single-handedly transformed it into a winner. She went up against a capable, far more experienced opponent and wiped the floor with him. If that isn’t a stellar performance, I don’t know what is.

 

 

 

LOL What?!

Rikkitic:

 

You may have a point. I am an unabashed fan. And I agree with your assessment of my worthy adversary. But it is worth recalling that JA took a dispirited, losing party without a chance in hell of gaining power and single-handedly transformed it into a winner. She went up against a capable, far more experienced opponent and wiped the floor with him. If that isn’t a stellar performance, I don’t know what its.

 

2017 Election Result

Labour: 36.89% of the vote

National: 44.45% of the vote

Yeah sure, Ardern wiped the floor.

I don't see English running the government.

Rikkitic:

 

I don't see English running the government.

 

 

 

Because of Peters putting his personal vendetta ahead of the country.

networkn:

 

Rikkitic:

 

I don't see English running the government.

 

 

Because of Peters putting his personal vendetta ahead of the country.

 

Lol. It wasn't a consipracy. It's an interesting sequence of events.

Rikkitic:

 

I don't see English running the government.

 

For heaven's sake, that argument is about as intelligent as going outside and observing rain immediately and then concluding that you caused the rain. Correlation does not equate to causation. Ardern led the government for one reason and one reason alone: Winston Peters' unhealthy dominance of a so called political "party" and "its" choice to go against the almost certain political leanings of most of its supporters to support Labour forming a government. That choice is almost certainly influenced by Peters' personal animosity towards a lot of senior National Party people, as evidenced by his lol-tastically-stupid failed lawsuit. Since forming part of the government, NZF has exercised an effective veto on anything that it doesn't like.

Ultimately, on my part I am glad that National is not in government. But none of this justifies a piece of BS revisionist history.

Ardern becoming the PM does not per se prove any greatness on her part.

I am having some fun with this, but the point is that after the last election, and the debates with Bill English, and three years of government, at this moment according to the latest polls, Labour is far and away the most popular party in New Zealand, maybe even twice as big as National following the next election. That is a pretty good result. Maybe Ardern has just been lucky. Maybe she is more clever than some want to think. However she has pulled it off, history will remember the winner, not the loser.