{"id":851,"date":"2008-07-01T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2008-07-01T00:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=851"},"modified":"2008-07-01T00:01:16","modified_gmt":"2008-07-01T00:01:16","slug":"john-key-and-explaining-is-losing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=851","title":{"rendered":"John Key and “Explaining Is Losing”"},"content":{"rendered":"

DomPost man in the Beehive Vernon Small: As National leader John Key is fond of saying: Explaining is losing.<\/a>
\nI find myself forced to question this – does he really say that? Google sure don’t find any instances. Gerry Brownless said it in the house a year ago, but that’s about it. So does Vernon Small really testify that Key says this when off-mike? That’s a hell of a bean to throw, if so, because it comes from the arch-demon himself:<\/p>\n

“Explaining is losing.” This is the only direct quote I’ve lifted from the book, because it is key, absolutely critical. If your guy has to explain anything – his policies, his past, anything – then your guy is playing a losing game. Voters in general don’t want to be burdened with policy details and candidates certainly don’t want to get mired in personal explanations. Just forget explaining anything — anything at all — and move on. It’ll work. You’ll be amazed.
\n– from a summary of ‘Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George Bush Presidential’<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of election advice and strategy, Nicky Hager’s continued that unfamiliar “journalism” thing with a report on how John Key and the National core have enlisted extensive multi-year support from despised election dirty-tricks experts Crosby, Stills & Textor<\/a>. As usual with Hager’s stuff, his story is then picked up and covered mostly in terms of “who does that Nicky Hager think he is” and “how is he getting all this information” rather than actually paying attention to what he’s dug up. But that’s the way things are done now, sad to say.
\n(Hager is a special guest at this Thursday’s Drinking Liberally in Wellington. I’m gonna be there.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DomPost man in the Beehive Vernon Small: As National leader John Key is fond of saying: Explaining is losing. I find myself forced to question this – does he really say that? Google sure don’t find any instances. Gerry Brownless said it in the house a year ago, but that’s about it. So does Vernon … Continue reading John Key and “Explaining Is Losing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-political","category-wellington"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-dJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}