By Chris Satullo
Jacinda Ardern’s decision this week to resign as New Zealand’s prime minister at the age of 42 sharply underlines a paradox of modern political leadership.
The people who possess the emotional intelligence and balanced perspective to be model leaders tend not to be gripped by the raging need for power and approval that drives other politicians to hang on during rough times.
Elected in 2017, Ardern became a global rock star with her firm management of the COVID-19 crisis, her deft, inspiring response to the Whitechurch mass murder, and the kindly good-humor with which she met the overheated rhetoric and, sometimes, outright threats spewed by some of her critics.
Her tenure was marked by one mind-boggling, unavoidable crisis after another, yet she seemed able to manage it all while throwing in a witty remark for good measure – until, Wednesday, when she revealed the hidden toll the job had exacted. It had, she said, emptied her inner reserves, making the prospect of standing for a hotly contested election this October seem a bridge too far.
In making her stunning announcement, Ardern said, “I am human, politicians are human. We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then it’s time. And for me, it’s time.”
Ardern said she looked forward to taking her young daughter to school and to marrying the girl’s father, who famously took the lead in caring for their child while she ran the country.
Politicians, of course, frequently say they are stepping down to spend more time with their families. They actually mean it about as often as I score a hole-in-one on the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass. (Hint: That would be never.)
So, was Ardern, like run-of-the-mill politicians, invoking family ties to disguise that she was leaving just one step ahead of the sheriff? Doesn’t seem so.
Yes, while grappling with inflation, a labor shortage and venom from anti-vaxxers (all problems that apparently jump oceans with ease), Ardern saw her once-celestial approval ratings dip. Her Labour Party was lagging behind the right-leaning National Party in early polls. But her approval scores still outpace her party’s. Customary political calculus would still tab her as Labour’s best shot at muddling through to a close win in October.
Listen carefully, though, to her words on Wednesday and you can detect higher-level reasoning: “With such a privileged role comes responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not.”
She was not asking herself the usual, blunt political question: Can I win? She was pondering a deeper query: If I win, can I do the job at the level the voters deserve?
Her answer, which very few politicians would have the humility or bravery to utter, was: No.
So that’s the conundrum. Ardern apparently does not have the raging hole in her psyche, the dark pit in her soul, that so many politicians desperately seek to fill with cheering crowds, balloon drops, victory speeches and motorcades. Donald Trump is only the most blatant, the most jaw-droppingly needy of this ilk.
As a working journalist for four decades, two of them as an editorial writer whose endorsement campaigning pols eagerly sought, I got to glimpse just how coarsely needy, how desperate to hang on many politicians were. Every election season brought a parade of hollow men (and some women) into our offices seeking to bluster, blather, bloviate and berate their way to power and prestige.
The rare ones who came across as fully-formed humans, whole people with a sense of proportion and a smidgeon of self-knowledge, stood out. Scoff if you will, but Joe Biden, who in those days frequently visited the Fishbowl (as the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editoriral board meeting room back then was known), was one of those people. Yes, he bloviates and wanders a bit, but you sense in the man a fundamental decency and rooted, not tactical, values.
This is tricky ground, but the differences Ardern displayed as she went about her business as prime minister seemed to connect with gender. She could urge New Zealanders to be “kind” without it seeming phony or saccharine. She consistently declined invitations to engage in pitched verbal combat with political opponents; no charging bull or horn-butting ram she.
Ardern was different and welcome as a leader in part because she exemplified traits and values which, while not exclusively feminine, are perhaps more prevalent among women: a concern for kindness and civility, a focus on community and communal striving, a vocabulary of healing. She also seemed attuned to the particular values of a younger, globally aware generation.
Her civility seemed to engender reciprocity. The response of Christopher Luxon, the head of the National Party, to Ardern’s announcement modeled a kind of generosity one cannot imagine being offered by the opposition to a departing Donald Trump or Joe Biden in these times for our nation: “I offer to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern our thanks for her service to New Zealand. She has given her all to this incredibly demanding job.”
You can push this kind of riff too far. Margaret Thatcher, after all, was a woman – as are Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Taking generalizations about gender too far or too seriously is always a mistake.
But suffice it to say, as a leader and an individual, Ardern came across as comfortable in her our own skin, determined without being obsessive, ambitious but not driven by psychic wounds, confident while capable of self-deprecation. She seems, as a person, whole and grounded and caring. The un-Putin, in other words.
These traits enabled her to perceive that the needle on her inner tank was sinking towards empty – and, even more impressively, to act decisively on that insight.
So, good for her – but not so good for the Kiwis nor for the rest of us. We have one fewer leader to look up to on the global stage.
That, again, is the painful paradox of the times. The leaders we need and yearn for will not be addicted to power and approval. They won’t be willing to put up forever with the stresses and agonies of leading a people as irrational, obstreperous, and selfish as we citizens of Western democracies lately have tended to be.
—
Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia