A GOOD TIME TO BE IN GOVERNMENT

It’s hard to think of a Government in a rich country that’s been defeated recently. Sitting governments of the right and left from Australia to France, Germany, U.S. and Canada have all been returned. Spain is the exception but the murderous terrorist attack on Madrid, and the criminal attempt by the government a day before the election to blame the wrong terrorists, is a good explanation. It’s a good time to be in government. Actually there’s never a bad time to be in government. The worst day in government is better than the best day in opposition. The world economy is pumping along at the best and most sustained manner in a generation. Commodity prices for exporters has the highest spread of prices for decades.

The countries that are doing the best are the ones that restructured painfully in the 1980’s, privatised, rolled back debt, beat inflation with independent central banks, and have moved to surplus. Britain is no longer the sick man of Europe, Germany held high as an example of how to do things differently in the 1980’s is anaemic, the demon of demographics is already playing a costly role in government expenditures in Europe, and Japan is flat, but still the world’s 2nd economy. China is responsible for about a quarter of global growth, soon to be the world’s 3rd biggest exporter and importer. However there’s still a few dangerous trolls under the bridge, namely the U.S. deficit, oil prices, and terrorism.

Given the return of most sitting governments, opposition parties, the Democrats in the U.S., Labour in Australia, Conservatives in the U.K., New Zealand and Canada, are all trying to figure out where to go. It’s particularly galling for some to see themselves defeated by parties that now are enjoying the electoral success born out of the results of policies their successors opposed. The Liberals in Canada collapsed the Conservative Government to a handful of seats in part because of their opposition to their free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico. The Liberals got the benefit, true, Prime Minister Martin, as Finance Minister, put the budget in surplus. Now he’s spending. That’s also true of Australia where, unusually, the Conservative party promised to outspend the Labour party during their successful election campaign. Bill Clinton mastered the art of stealing his opponents’ strongest policies of differentiation, compromised them, defused the issues, and grandly called the strategy ‘triangulation’. Actually it was strangulation. New Zealand is prudently implementing good policies that I was once mocked for promoting. Still there is much consolation in seeing the right thing done. I sent a poem of Sir Walter Scott to a defeated friend who complained that after the election the government was now doing all the things he was ridiculed for promoting.

”But I have dreamed, a dreary dream, I saw a dead man win a fight and I think that man was I.”

Opposition parties preparing to fight again have a tough time. The biggest mistake is to blame the people. The people are always right, even when they are wrong. The Wall Street Journal, writing of the agonies of the Democratic Party now going through the ritual examinations of electoral failure seeking to blame someone, like the Evangelical Church, resurrected a leaflet published at the time of the workers’ protests in East Berlin in 1953.

A party official’s leaflet explained; stating that “the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could win it back only by redoubling efforts.”

Playwright Bevlolt Brech replied, “Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and choose itself another?”

The theory that the play was a success but its audience let it down won’t do. Opposition parties have to do better than ‘lip-sync’ the government, sort of playing political air guitar, nor can they just oppose and attack. Oppose, propose then dispose is an honoured political responsibility. Ideology may be dead but idealism is not nor are ideas. George Bush is planning for the ‘ownership society’, so is Blair’s new Labour. Imagine the Conservatives’ impotent fury when U.K., Labour talks of capital gains tax cuts to encourage share ownership. But alas in politics, opinion polls make cowards of us all, that’s why normally opposition parties are just so damn boring.

Governments have the power to shut down issues and do that brilliantly in New Zealand, the U.K. and Australia. It’s hard to see any of those governments changing soon , unless there is some internal party leadership stuff-up.