Barry Soper: Jacinda Ardern is treading water, the master of soft, flattering interviews

There has been an opinion that Prime Minister Arden was possibly an accidental Prime Minister, she is seen as the rookie leader who got her fame as she came out from the shadows in the 2017belection and Mr. Winston Peters only gave her this title because she was willing to wear more hats than Bill English was ready to.

But she has taken her place and made a strong Prime Minister with the way she handles the situation of Covid coming around and devastating the whole world. If it were not for Peters or Covid Ms. Arden would be leading the opposition even though there was a slight doubt.

Jacinda Arden has the gentlest way of handling the media and makes good use of her communications education to blanch tough questions and not lose her control at the questions sometimes during interviews.

Arden took such concern where the virus was concerned that the virus itself became her safety net without which she would have to face the harsh reality of the fact that her government has been moribund. This happened when at the press conference she took 8 minutes for her to mention that she was moving the country down an alert level.  

The press cannot relate to the prime minister only because unlike her predecessors she has not had a human moment with them usually the parliamentary media in invited to the 9^th floor beehive office where the prime minister will have some time with them giving them a human face to a public performer. Prime Minister Arden hast done this in fact she has only done it once and that too a few months after she took up office.

When on compares Ardern to the last populist prime minister John Key. The National leader liked to be liked and he was because he was self-deprecating, posing for derpies with students on university campuses, falling off stages and mincing along catwalks. He was a serious politician, but his antics demonstrated to his supporters he wasn’t above them. The closest Arden’s got to silliness was admitting she did a dance with her daughter when the country had no active cases of Covid last June. That admission flashed around the world as do most things when it comes to Ardern.