Some people are a natural in the media, especially visual media, although not many. They train and they practice but the camera is never all that kind to them. Jacinda Ardern managed to build a saintly image through TV before she completely rooted the country. Others are not very good, and will never be very good regardless of the training and practice they do, because they don’t have the right instincts to deliver well.
Christopher Luxon is an example of this latter type. His instincts are all wrong: he thinks he can bullshit his way through difficult questions with a word salad that would make Kamala Harris or Jacinda Ardern proud. So he needs more work and more practice than anyone.
Which makes you wonder why the hell Hamish Rutherford was driven out of the leader’s office. Hamish is one of the smartest media operators around, with a track record of being a very capable comms staffer that can make even the most inept look competent.
Unfortunately Rutherford left after a year. Sources inside National say this was caused by the complete dictatorial dysfunction of the leader’s office, where Luxon’s chief of staff hasn’t worked out that politics is not business and that you can’t expect people to put in the brutal hours required if you treat them like your subordinates in a company. Staffers, or at least the good ones, are underpaid and overworked: they can get much better jobs in the private sector, where they can see their families, have hobbies and earn more money.
Luxon’s inept media performance has something to do with his inept management of his staff. You can’t lose the head of communications, which should be the best comms job in the country, because your hierarchical office doesn’t reflect how politics works.
Just like Luxon doesn’t have a faction in caucus, he doesn’t really have a faction of devoted staffers who will defend him to anyone – because the staff don’t think he would defend them and they can see what the rest of us see: Luxon is just not very good.
