Such is the banal and asinine nature of most New Zealand bourgeois politicians that it is really no surprise the attitude towards them on the part of the average punter in the street is one of sheer exasperation and ennui. How then to explain the current popular and media hysteria over the Winston Peters-Owen Glenn saga?
Today’s Dominion Post features former National Party spin doctor Richard Long comparing the Labour Party to the corrupt rulers of the Byzantine Empire in his bid to justify tremendous hype over the events playing out in the parliamentary privileges committee over the last fortnight.
As his allusions to the works of Graham Greene make clear, Long is certainly aware of the strong element of bathos in play here. One could perhaps fault him on one or two points of historical accuracy (such as the idea that the political institutions of the Roman Republic or the Byzantine Empire had anything in common with Athenian radical democracy), but the point is essentially valid – the Labour Party is to the Byzantine Emperors what sad old Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was to his uncle and namesake, the victor of Austerlitz. (meanwhile the National Party itself is so utterly insipid that it is impossible to think of any obvious historical allusions!)
But how to explain the magnetic power of the man himself, Winston Peters, who even in the hour of his political nemesis still manages to captivate the nation in a way that no other bourgeois politician can?
Continuing with our classical precedents, I think that it is perhaps because Winston embodies that same mercurial mix of attraction and repulsion – or as Aristotle would describe it, pity and fear – that characterised the Athenian demagogues such as Alcibiades, who had a very similar love/hate relationship with the electorate to that enjoyed Winston.
Unhappily for Winston though if the fate of Alcibiades is anything to go by his future prospects look very bleak indeed. All very sad really when you consider that once the tragic spectacle of the populist demogogue undone by “those sneaky baubles” (to borrow David W. Young’s great phrase) passes from our TV screens, bourgeois politics in New Zealand will no longer be even a halfway decent spectator sport!
Tags: Owen Glenn, Winston Peters
September 16, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Finally, someone interested in NZ politics who knows their history! Excellent analogies, particularly in the case of Winston Peters and the Athenian demagogues.
I think that while Alcibiades is similar to Winston, that perhaps Cleon is another which is marginally closer. My thoughts go to Cleon’s incredible legal battles, his rabid anti-elitism and his oratory. The three both match Winston to the hilt.
More than anything else, I think politicians like Winston Peters and Cleon alike existing thousands of years apart demonstrate that no matter what people say, a lot of things always stay the same.
September 16, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Yes Cleon might perhaps be a more apt comparison for Winston, although given the solidly aristocratic bias of contemporary writers such as Aristophanes people might be forgiven for not realising that he was actually a genuinely popular politician in his day.
By contrast, Alcibiades gets a pretty good (if entirely undeserved) press as the “golden boy” of Athenian politics – maybe closer parallels with David Lange?
October 7, 2008 at 3:28 pm
[...] else other than Winston Peters, the Alcibiades of New Zealand politics, could inspire such atypical fervour in the normally apathetic student body at the University of [...]