Imagine getting a positive pregnancy test and then –
just a few days later – learning you’ll be prime
minister. In hindsight, being willing and able to deal with
the unexpected would become the hallmark of former New
Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s political
career.
She had always stood out as a leader, but her
tumultuous political journey followed none of the
predictable pathways. Readers of her memoir will relive what
this was like, from her feelings about motherhood through to
meeting world leaders.
Review: A Different Kind of
Power – Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random
House)
The title of her book promises more than
just that, however. Many people hope
for a different kind of leader, but what personal
qualities or strengths do such leaders need? More generally,
can the personal qualities that contribute to great
leadership be learned and applied by others?
The
answer seems to be a qualified yes. Since leaving office,
Ardern has become something of a global influencer. But as
her career pivots towards celebrity appearances and
international agencies, her memoir also serves as a
leadership manifesto – especially for women, or aspirants
of any gender, who suffer self-doubt.
The limits of
empathy
In her formative years, working as an
assistant to Labour leader Helen Clark, Ardern relates how
she let political opponents get under her skin. Was she
“too thin-skinned” for politics? She soon learned “you
could be sensitive and survive”. Better still, she could
use her sensitivity as a strength.
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But “it is
different for women in the public eye”, she writes.
Derogatory terms were used against her, such as the “show
pony” epithet coined by a senior woman journalist.
There were questions
about whether she had “substance”. These things
could undermine people’s belief in her competence –
perhaps even her own self-belief.
What she did about
this is instructive. Lashing out at jibes and cartoon images
would make her look “humourless and too sensitive”. The
“trick” was to respond in a way that would “take the
story nowhere”. She became adept at that, deflecting
comments aimed at putting her down.
This also meant
being a feminist but not using feminism as her ideological
platform. Other than admonishing a TV presenter that it was
“unacceptable” for him to ask whether a sitting prime
minister could take maternity leave, she generally let
others do the outrage and avoided becoming an even bigger
target for culture warriors.
But A Different Kind of
Power asks the question: different from what? Ardern’s
political career has been a challenge, if not a rebuke, to
leaders who indulge in egotistical, competitive,
always-be-winning behaviour. Need one even mention Donald
Trump?
Instead, Ardern offers kindness and empathy.
The approach showed its true strength in the days following
the terrorist
atrocity in Christchurch in 2019. At a time when
anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiments were growing,
Ardern embraced the victims. “They are us”, she
declared. Emotions that could have generated a cycle of
blame were guided by her towards sharing of grief and aroha.
Like
any political virtue, though, empathy has limitations: it
touches those whose suffering commands our attention, but it
is partial. Effective social policy also requires an
impartial administration and redistribution of resources.
Leaders must ensure public goods are delivered equitably to
those in need, which calls for rational planning.
And
sometimes a national emergency may call for actions that
feel unfair or insensitive to some.
Pandemic
politics
COVID-19 was that emergency. It created deep
uncertainty for governments, and there was no “kind”
pathway forward. The Ardern government did an exemplary job,
saving many lives, and the Labour Party was rewarded at the
2020 election with an unprecedented 50% of the party vote.
But Ardern’s retelling of that time is surprisingly brief,
especially given her pivotal role.
She put herself
daily at the centre of it all, patiently explaining the
public health responses. During this battle with a virus,
however, she couldn’t inoculate against the political
consequences and shifts in public opinion.
As the
pandemic wore on, many New Zealanders whose businesses had
been shut down, who had been isolated in their homes, who
had difficulty returning home from abroad or who’d been
ostracised for not getting vaccinated, weren’t feeling
much empathy or kindness from their government. And they
felt they were being silenced. This sentiment grew far
beyond the activists
who had made themselves heard on parliament grounds in
early 2022.
Ardern refused to meet with those
protestors. “How could I send a message that if you
disagree with something, you can illegally occupy the
grounds of parliament and then have your demands
met?”
But she (or a senior minister) could have
heard their demands and explained why they couldn’t be
met. Her refusal to listen left the field open to veteran
populist Winston Peters, who exploited
the opportunity, launching his campaign to return to
parliament – in which he now sits and Ardern
doesn’t.
While vaccine mandates were a key concern
for protestors, it’s disappointing that, to this day,
Ardern blames the dissenters, as if they were “not us”
– kicked out of the “team of five million”. She
attributes the dissent solely to their “mistrust”.
Refusing to listen – not just to protestors, but to deeper
shifts in public opinion – would cost Labour
dearly.
Induced by the pandemic
fiscal stimulus, inflation peaked at 7.3% in June 2022.
By that time, two switches had occurred: the National Party
was ahead in polls and a majority were saying the country
was heading in the wrong direction. In January 2023, then,
Ardern
resigned as prime minister. She believed, probably
correctly, that it would be “good for my party and perhaps
it would be good for the election”.
The toll of
leadership
But she also reveals in her memoir that a
cancer
scare influenced the decision – a false alarm, but a
sign perhaps that the job was taking its toll. Her leaving
could “take the heat out of the politics”, she reasoned.
And anyway, she was tired, stressed and losing her
patience.
The leadership change to Chris Hipkins –
and a devastating
cyclone – boosted Labour’s polling for a while. But
their 1,443,545 party votes in 2020 fell to 767,540 in the
October 2023 election.
Hundreds of thousands of voters
had turned their backs on the Labour Party, and the COVID
response wasn’t solely to blame. There were also
controversial or failed policies – such as restructuring
water services, a proposed unemployment insurance scheme,
and Māori co-governance initiatives – that were
ruthlessly exploited by the political opposition. These were
all initiated under Ardern, although unmentioned in her
memoir.
Her book is more about subjective self-doubt
and empathy. She doesn’t critically examine her own
policies. Nor does she express empathy for those who felt
disadvantaged or excluded by them – granting as always
that emergency measures had been necessary. And, as she
heads further into an international career, there’s no
expression of empathy for those who now need it most, be
they children in Gaza or refugees in South
Sudan.
It’s disappointing Ardern doesn’t define
key words: empathy, leadership or power, for example. There
are different ways to understand them, and definitions carry
assumptions. But she’s not addressing academics or
political analysts. Her audience is primarily American – a
much larger and more lucrative market than her home country.
With the Democrats struggling to find direction and
leadership after last year’s losses, Ardern – who poses
no threat to anyone’s political ambitions there – offers
some inspiration.
Some may fault it for avoiding those
harder questions about her time at the top, but Ardern’s
memoir interweaves an authentically retold personal story
with high political drama. It tells of one woman’s
struggle with morning sickness, childbirth, breastfeeding
and motherhood, even while taking on extraordinary public
responsibilities and media exposure. It’s still amazing
how she managed to do all that.
Grant
Duncan, Teaching Fellow in Politics and
International Relations, University
of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
This
article is republished from The
Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Read the original
article.
Disclosure
statement
I was a personal acquaintance of
Jacinda, when she was a list MP in Auckland
Central.
