Island Life by David Slack

'Global economic crisis' is a mouthful. If one must use eight syllables every time one wishes to refer to the colossal mess we're in, one will grow weary.

None of the others are very much more concise. Current financial problems has seven. Worldwide credit crunch uses a snappy five, but it's a little tabloid.

We all know what we're talking about. This is afraid-of-the-dark for grownups. This is your most dreadful imaginings come alive.

Something so ghastly should have a name of its own.

A name gives a face to a thing. A single syllable employed to identity the problem leaves us more sentence room (we hope?) for a solution.

G20 leaders met today to discuss solutions to name.

Fears about the effects of name deepened today on news that unemployment has topped 18%.

What to call it? What name best captures the sense of it?

I have a suggestion. Some will rightly demur: Yes, he's been an imbecile, but this is the work of more than just a single one.

Nonetheless we are in this mess because we have have entirely ignored - or been blithely unaware of - the lessons of the 20th century. Not one single person seems more emblematic of the foolhardiness, the hubris, the casual disregard that has brought us to this sorry pass.

I propose we call it George.

I remember my maiden speech in parliament as if it were yesterday. Grown men wept. Even the parliamentary messengers looked up from their newspapers. By the next morning, I was the talk of Wellington. Leader writers rhapsodised. I was the face of a new generation, a leader in the making, the great hope of the nation. I was young, gifted and Slack.

Speech writers make shit up all the time. People only notice it when we say something ludicrously implausible.

But a good speech, one that makes people believe, well: that can be a thing of beauty, a moment of awe.

I speak now of the maiden speech and I address the nation's newest MPs.

Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to enter parliament. Your very first chance to shine will soon be upon you. After that, for quite a while, it may be no more than patsy lines at question time. Make the most of this moment.

Perhaps you've been quietly thinking: gee, it would be nice if I could sound like Barack Obama.

Let's be blunt: everyone wants to sound like Him; only He can pull it off.

But that doesn't mean you can't make yourself a much better orator. I offer you a short check list to put you on the right track.

1. Why are you here?

Complete this sentence: I came into politics because…..

Now: discard whatever you just wrote down, and try again.

You may have a stock answer you've been using for months or even years; we may well have heard it a thousand times before.

Don't settle for telling us what your party believes in, or repeating your stock phrase for the reporters; DIG. Try to recall a particular moment or event which has moulded your approach to life and politics; an injustice; a struggle; a revelation. A rip-off. A shock.

Tell us all about it. Show us the view of the world though your eyes.

Unless you are the very greyest of people, the most vacant-eyed of clones, there will be something about the way you look at the world that is new, and distinct.

Share that; we need fresh insights.

And so do you. Take your fresh insight and use it to guide your political career.

2. Disrobe
People lean forward in their chairs when you give them the unexpected.

We have many things on our minds that we keep to ourselves. Some should be kept there, but many others should not; we are the better for having them declared out loud.

Brave speakers embrace this idea.

Speak candidly, cut through the blandness.

Say what is in your heart. Be frank. Acknowledge the things you worry about in money, in work, in business, in relationships. Maybe you'll mention the coke you did in your thirties, maybe you won't mention the thing you have for high school uniforms.

What matters is that you acknowledge people as they are, and not as they represent themselves to be.

3. Thesaurus: not a small dinosaur

Barack Obama takes familiar ideas and commonplace observations and makes them fresh.

If you can produce just one line in your speech that sparkles enough to make the newspapers report it, you will have done well.

Write and rewrite, with Mark Twain's advice in mind:

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

4. Tell a story

Management language is the curse of the modern world.

Management language loves to speak in the abstract.

You are here to share ideas, but not just in the abstract.

The best way to share ideas in a speech is to bring them to life with real people, real life, real stories.

How did Barack Obama describe the sweep of the 20th century? He told us the story of a 106 year old woman named Ann Nixon Cooper.

Tell us about the people you've met; the places you've been; the remarkable and dreadful things you have seen.

Take the stories of the people to the house of representatives and talk about the people you represent.

5. If you want to be Obama, do not try to be Obama.
The point of a speech is to achieve a connection.

They call Harvard Law graduates like Obama cool cats.

He speaks. The cool cat conveys his serene calm, his sure confidence, his perception and his empathy. The surely-crafted words buttress the style, and the style is buttressed by the truth of the words.

There is authenticity, and lyricism, and a connection between speaker and audience is made.

Make your character as evident as he makes his. You will be judged, as he has, by its content.

6. Arrive, and remain, realistic.

Winston Churchill was once asked, "Doesn’t it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?"

"It’s quite flattering," he replied.

"But whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big."

Corporate raider, investment writer and 'Minus Millionaire' Jim Slater reminisces:

I once did a deal with Tiny Rowlands about selling wattle in East Africa.

When we shook hands, Rowlands said, "By the way, what is wattle?"

To which I replied, "Where is East Africa?"

Complete this sentence: The lesson of the Great Depression is…

This is a foolish question to ask. It has only been seven decades; far too soon to know. I left high school believing this to be true: FDR delivered America from the Depression; the Savage government put New Zealand back to work.

Yes, and no.

I have been waiting to hear some good rebuttal to those who say: "Press on and get it over with. Take the hit. All this indebtedness and printed money has created a phoney economy. It can't sustain itself. Kick out the props. Let the bankruptcies and implosions ensue, and then let's pick up and move on with a new bunch of winners and losers."

But what if you create a vortex of failure that pulls down ever more businesses and people?

Let us turn to this week's instalment from the man the libertarians and Friedmanites have been roundly mocking. They put his Nobel Prize in inverted commas; they say he's a problem, not a solution. All the same, I consider the price we might pay for vast economic convulsion and I think: can we have another look at Krugman's ideas?

He writes that the problem with FDR was not that he was Keynesian but that he was not Keynesian enough. It was that vast engine of state-funded economic activity, World War II, that finally got things rolling.

That said, F.D.R. did not, in fact, manage to engineer a full economic recovery during his first two terms. This failure is often cited as evidence against Keynesian economics, which says that increased public spending can get a stalled economy moving. But the definitive study of fiscal policy in the ’30s, by the M.I.T. economist E. Cary Brown, reached a very different conclusion: fiscal stimulus was unsuccessful “not because it does not work, but because it was not tried.”

...

And F.D.R. wasn’t just reluctant to pursue an all-out fiscal expansion — he was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.

What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.

This morning on the radio, Tony Alexander said that the lesson of the Great Depression was that a Government should loosen the purse strings. Hear, hear! Sooner the better. I endorse the words of Ben Gracewood in our forums on Monday:

Listen, it's mid-morning already and I can't see any sign of contractors laying fibre up my driveway.
What gives, National?

You may recall the howls of derision in 2005.

How on earth can you be a minister and remain outside the government? they demanded.

That was then, this is now. This morning's paper tells me:

Mr Key acknowledged yesterday that he was wrong and "in hindsight" it had worked well.

I recently had the pleasure of hearing some of Frank Sargeson's old friends reminisce about his life and work. Frank would rise each day to craft a modest 300 words. 300 is not a large number. Frank did not have the benefit of a computer. Such marvellous machines they are. You can excise the wrong word in an instant; you can drop in new lines just as swiftly.

A busy journalist knows how to make the most of such a tool. Frequently-used phrases can be pasted into a story faster than you can say "auto correct".

We can surely expect certain lines to become very familiar in the medium term.

Insert name here acknowledged yesterday that he was wrong and "in hindsight" it had worked well.

Perhaps something from Mr Brownlee about our light bulbs? And, given the pressing need for our little nation to become better savers, would a "hindsight" reconsideration of KiwiSaver rates and the independence of the Superannuation Fund be too much to hope for?