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I've always liked the advice that "journalists should avoid clichés like the plague". Not only are clichés dull they're often inaccurate because they use a generic phrase to describe a specific case.
So right now, as National presides over a multitude of stuff-ups, we hear commentators saying "the wheels are falling off" and "it's the end of the honeymoon".
Nonsense.
I'm not arguing National hasn't hit a rough patch - clearly it has - but this is not some dramatic convergence of events that has suddenly come together to inflict woe on the Key administration.
The factors giving rise to its troubles were there from the minute the government was sworn in. It is simply the downside of the John Key style: relaxed, hands-off, trusting, intuitive and with an occasional appetite for risk that has led them to this position.
Christine Rankin's appointment to the Families' Commission is the most glaring example of how this style can let you down in government.
Is there anything about her past behaviour to suggest she may be a risk (I don't know, like spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lavish conferences and branding for a social welfare department during a recession, or taking the government to court?). Is there anything which may come out in the future to suggest she could be a risk (like, we're putting her on the Families Commission just after her fourth marriage to a man whose former wife just killed herself)?
These questions weren't asked.
But that is only the most obvious example of sloppiness. It's actually been happening right through the government's first six months in office. Ministers don't tell each other things. They don't honour the 'no surprises' policy:
1. Defence Minister Wayne Mapp didn't tell Foreign Minister Murray McCully he had released into the public arena, a formal request from the United States that New Zealand combat troops be sent back to Afghanistan.
2. Tariana Turia didn't tell John Key that she wanted her co-leader Pita Sharples to lead a Maori delegation to Fiji before going public with it.
3. Steven Joyce didn't signal to Melissa Lee what the government's intentions were for the Waterview project before she went into a major TV debate on the Mt Albert by-election where that was the burning issue.
4. Richard Worth didn't tell John Key he had shares in an aviation company with interests in India before going on a private business trip there.
5. Kanwal Bakshi didn't tell the PM that he'd discovered that a brothel was being run from the Auckland house he was renting out.
And they are only the examples I can think of between my third and fourth coffee of the morning.
Now, I think what we saw on Monday was the handbrake being pulled on.
Local Government Minister Rodney Hide was all set to announce his appointments to the transition agency of the super city including his pick for chief, WaterCare boss Mark Ford. It looks like Key and his Cabinet colleagues got the jitters and want to run the ruler over the transition agency appointments in case there is a lurking embarrassment among the names put forward.
Because that's the thing - Key may be relaxed, somewhat hands-off and prone to delegate, but he is a fast learner.
One of his strengths is that he doesn't deny his mistakes - he acknowledges them, learns from them and corrects them. That's largely why he's a popular Prime Minister after only becoming an MP in 2002. (Helen Clark came to Parliament in 1981 and made Prime Minister 18 years later).
So expect to see more of this - more centralised communication, more command and control tactics. I predict by the end of the year we'll see a story emerging that some tough minded political operator has been appointed to troubleshoot in the Beehive.
National still lacks the equivalent of Clark's Heather Simpson, who'd trawl through Cabinet papers, Official Information Act requests and answers to Parliamentary Questions looking for even a whiff of controversy. As a journalist I'm not advocating they do this - I'd kind of like the unscripted style to remain as it is!
But I'm sure National will be forced to wake up and tidy up the sloppy political management.
Like journalists they'll probably resort to cliché in
their justification for it: "Loose lips, sink ships"
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