"THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS ARE THE WORST"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 221, 17 September 1943, Page 6

"THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS ARE THE WORST"

Confession of a Defeated Candidate

politics and some dfagged in. I knew one once who had been kicked in by a cow-or so he told me. He had been a farmer, but a cow broke his knee-cap and changed the whole course of his life. My brief plunge into public life changed nothing. I ended at the bottom of the poll and at no stage in the campaign did I feel for more than two or three minutes that I would end anywhere else. So I picked myself up with as much dignity as I could muster and went back to the only job society had ever thought I could do. Since something like that will happen to three out of four of the 291 candidates nominated ‘last week, I offer my sympathy in advance. I can assure them that the first seven years afterwards are the worst: About the eighth year the joke will be dawning on them. In 10 they will be laughing without effort. * * * NYHOW, this is what it looks like now. I’ became a candidate for all that mixture of reasons with which we work ourselves into delusions of dutyvanity, generosity, self-seeking, selflove, public spirit, love of our fellows, love of the limelight, dislike of a person, devotion to a cause, interest in our children, pity for ourselves, shame in ourselves, and so on. I was, of course, not conscious of all those influences when I found myself, quite without warning, listening to reasons why I should "come forward in the public interest," but if they had not been at work, I would never have agreed even to consider the question, and should certainly not have answered solemnly in a day or two that I was "sensible of the great honour" the deputation had shown me and "of my own unworthiness," but after earnest consideration, etc., etc., had decided to accept their invitation. For I was not a party man, had no political tradition behind me, and no qualifications at all for smiling at babies and attending flower shows. I am sure, too, that I had not previously thought of a political career or even dreamt of one. * * * UT a night came on which I found myself sitting on a stage watching a theatre fill with people who were arriving to hear me speak. I saw the chairman rise and the talking stop, heard him asking the audience to give me a fair hearing, and then realised suddenly that the little crackle of applause that followed was the call for me to begin. I was, you see, a complete novice, not exactly tongue-tied, but entirely without experience in this class of speaking, which is dominated by the thought that you must sell yourself and your cause (if you have one), more successfully than your opponents will be able to sell themselves and their causes. Unless you strike a successful compromise between cheapness and worth the others will beat you. They will undercut you on price (make more jokes, distribute more smiles, a more rebuffs), or overpuff you on value (promise more, show . OME men are born into

more sympathy, offer bigger bribes. But whatever your opponents do, the position between you and your audience is that you are the seller and they are the customers; and the customers, as you know, are always right. So you ignore them when they are rude, smile fatuously when some wag makes a fool of you, listen respectfully when a fool asks a stupid question. If you lose your temper, you are lost. % * * WELL, I did not lose my temper. But I once lost my notes, once took the wrong glasses and could not read my

notes, often lost my memory or my line of thought or mty sense of humour, and after about half a dozen meetings, lost, irretrievably, all interest in what I was saying. From that stage on I longed for questioners and hecklers, end even for the fanatics who follow candidates round asking the same set of questions and repeating the same obvious attempts to corner or commit them. But it is not always safe to anticipate their questions and declare yourself in advance. One of my most awkward moments came at the end of a meeting in a woolshed in which I began by saying that it would save time if I announced at the outset that I was opposed to Douglas Credit. It was a good meeting, with an entirely respectful audience of 50 or 60, who asked a few questions and then apparently were satisfied. But when the chairman rose to close proceedings, a black man got up at the back and asked permission to put a question. "TI think the candidate said that he is opposed to Douglas Credit?" "I did." "Has the candidate made a deep study of Douglas Credit?" "Not exactly deep, but I have examined it." "Does the candidate feel justified in condemning something he does not understand?" "Who said he did not understand it?" "The candidate said he had not studied it deeply." "Well, he knows the ABC of it, and is not tempted to go further." "Would the candidate please tell this audience the ABC of Douglas Credit?" Fortunately the candidate could and did; but he could not have gone as far as D, and sat down sweating. * * * NCE I think I scored, but the audience did not. I was asked how much gold the Bank of New. Zealand held, and answered frankly that I did not know. "Well, you should know!" "Why should I?" "You are asking us to put you into Parliament. You are not fit for Parliament if you don’t know things like that." "No? What is your own occupation?" "I’m a shearer, and proud of it." "So should I be if I were a good shearer." "I am a good shearer." "Sure?" "Yes, I’m sure." "All right. What is the specific 7. of steel?" "Trying to be funny?" "No, just trying to find out how much you know about your job. Fancy calling yourself a good shearer when you don’t understand what your shears are made of." I still think it was my trick, but I got a boo for it at the time, and about (Continued on next page)

| WAS DEFEATED

(Continued from previous page) three votes when the numbers went up a fortnight later. ms * x JN general, however, I got very few boos, and that was my downfall-or at least the advance proof of it. Audiences were respectful, attentive, surprisingly good-natured and polite, and that, of course, was a fatal sign. It meant that minds were already made up and that I had no chance. This I fully understood; but although it necessarily cramped my style, I was not quite prepared for some of the things that happened. For example: I addressed a meeting that was not merely friendly but demonstrative. Though I protested, it insisted on moving and carrying with loud "acclamation," a motion of confidence as well as of thanks. There were 73 present, and not one of the 73 voted for me 10 days later! I was prepared to be last-in a field of three-but what is the answer when you are nowhere at all; just wiped off and wiped out? I leave it to the 240 candidates who are going to be rejected next week. Yes, the first seven are the worst of the years afterwards-I am well past them-and the first seven the worst of the booths on election night. I knew that I was licked before I started. I was prepared to grin and bear it when the gradually rising totals revealed my failure before it was finally announced.

In other words, I expected to be an "also started" after two or three hours. But I was down and out and an object of derision within 45 minutes, and I advise the 76 bottom candidates now to practise laughing before a mirror. If they don’t recognise themselves in advance, they will have to do some quick thinking about 10 or 11 on the night of the 25th. f * * * TILL, there were bright spots, and I shall end with one. My electorate included a Public Works camp, whose inhabitants were "tough" — too tough, my opponents thought, to be addressed. But adventurers rush in where the experienced fear to tread. I did address them, but I was very lucky that they did not address, and perhaps undress, me-there was a river only a hundred yards away. Were you ever as a child surrounded by frisking steers which kept closing in on you with the most terrifying breaths and faces? I was that child, I felt that anything would happen at any moment, when suddenly I had a brain-wave. We. had no chairman. That would not do at all. They must elect their chairman. It was their meeting and not mine. I was there to talk to them if they wanted me to talk, but that rested with them. Who was their leader? It worked. They started nudging one another, then naming one _ another. Finally, one man agreed to be the b-y chairman, and I was safer than with 10 policemen. When someone asked a quite innocent question, but at the wrong

time, the chairman turned on him with a roar: "Shut your b-y mouth, you! Who told you to speak?" He not only shut his mouth; he elbowed his way backwards out of sight, and there was not one further question until the chairman said before he moved a resolution: "You're against those b-s up there (Wellington)? Right. /That’s good enough for us. Mates, I move a hearty b-y resolution to-what did you say your name was? .. ." They did not vote for me, but they did not say they would, and long before I had finished talking to them they furtively dropped into their pockets the onions and potatoes I had seen in a dozen or more hands,