Becoming the leader of a political party is a bit like having a baby. Not so much the screaming and sleepless nights, as the fact that you’ve waited and hope and planned for something and it’s finally here. And when that wonderful gift finally arrives, you want to be ready, with the cot built and the wooly hats knitted. At the end of his first week leading the National Party, Todd Muller looked like he hadn’t even bought the car-seat.

Becoming the leader of a political party is a bit like having a baby. Not so much the screaming and sleepless nights, as the fact that you’ve waited and hope and planned for something and it’s finally here. And when that wonderful gift finally arrives, you want to be ready, with the cot built and the wooly hats knitted. At the end of his first week leading the National Party, Todd Muller looked like he hadn’t even bought the car-seat.

It raises the question of whether National is entering the phase Labour spent three terms in. A phase of flailing leaders, sliding confidence and reputational damage in the eyes of voters. It was a phase National was meant to have skipped by turning to Simon Bridges as a new generation leader, bypassing the caretaker stage Labour spent under Phil Goff. But Bridges was unable to by himself the time needed to get out from under Jacinda Ardern’s shadow.

Muller rolled Bridges promising to reconnect National with voters and get the party talking about the things that matter to New Zealanders. He wasn’t into opposition for opposition’s sake, he said, but liked to use the word “community” a lot and talk about small businesses and local economies.

As a new parent or new leader, all eyes are on you and that’s the way you want it. To show off your pride and joy. Especially, as with Muller, you’re the least known new leader of a major party since… well, I can’t think of a less known one in my lifetime. Or a lifetime or two before that (though someone with a better grasp of how previous leaders started may have something to say about that). When you move from Number 16 to Number 1, you know you’re about to get a serious examination.

Muller - and his deputy Nikki Kaye - failed that first test by quite a margin. They looked like those parents who had spent so much time on the pregnancy, they’d forgotten there was a baby at the end of it.

The political equivalent of that built cot and knitted woollens includes a couple of big policies to show you have a plan distinct from the previous leader, maybe a tough call or two ready to go to show you can make the hard calls, and a story or two to introduce yourself to a public that couldn’t pick you out of a police line-up.

You don’t have to go far back to see how to do it right. John Key landed with a conversation about the struggles of New Zealand’s “underclass”, he ditched Don Brash, focused on women voters and had the story ready to go about his rags to riches rise from a Christchurch state house to global banker.

Muller arrived to debate about his Make America Great Again cap, the whiteness of his front bench and loose language, such as most New Zealanders being unknowingly unemployed. When the child came, he just wasn’t ready and has spent most of the time reacting to minor stories exploding around him.

No, the hat and front bench aren’t devastating issues on their own; you're not going to lose many votes on the centre right for a souvenir hat and picking on merit. But people, especially when they are getting to know you and have few points of reference, are going to judge you. They are looking for first impressions and what they most want to see is competence. In politics, competence is sexy. It’s foundational. It’s the least we want from those who want to run the country.

What they don’t want to see or hear is a leader floundering, leaning on buzzwords and looking terrified as they await the next question. Yet that was exactly what Muller delivered. He needed to deal with the hat one way or another quickly. With his pale and stale - but certainly not male - front bench he needed to pivot to gender, talk about putting Shane Reti in position to be the first Maori Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister and even acknowledge the party’s weakness and promise over time to rebuild a party that looked like the country it wants to govern. What he didn’t want to do was blab on about Amy Adams as if she was the second coming and point to Paul Goldsmith of all people as the Maori face of National’s front bench.

Even Paula Bennett couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

As Muller did the usual rounds of interviews last week, he recalled nothing so much as David Shearer and David Cunliffe, as they fumbled and mumbled as Labour leaders. Muller didn’t seem to have the details under control, didn’t seem prepared, just as it used to feel watching Shearer interviewed about Kiwibuild or Cunliffe about Capital Gains Tax.

You wanted to look away, to put your head in your hands. It was uncomfortable viewing or listening. And when eyes are on you, when people are looking to get a first impression of you, you don’t want them looking away.

When you say you need to be leader because this government lacks a plan and you have an economic plan for communities, you need, well, a plan. At least an idea or two.

And when, after a week, you finally announce your first policy, maybe it shouldn’t have been Jobstart, National’s plan to give a $10,000 cash payment to businesses for each and additional new employee. It has something of the rushed and loose whiff of Kiwibuild about it.

As with Kiwibuild homes, how do you know any job created is a new job that wouldn’t otherwise have been created? And if you say the policy is “focused” on small business, why make it available to all? What’s to stop McDonald’s, SkyCity or BP using the cash to re-establish a job they cut during lockdown? And given companies get $5000 upfront and the second $5000 after the 90-day trial period, what’s to stop companies ditching someone after 89 days, pocketing the first installment and half the $500 million fund disappearing for a bunch of very temporary jobs?

Further, if you’re a company ideologically opposed to subsidies and obsessed in recent years with targeting, why would your relaunch policy be a subsidy that’s free to all? Finally, Muller’s main criticism of Labour has been that its economic response to Covid-19 has focused too heavily on labour force issues, with most money going to the wage subsidy rather than other business needs. So why would his first big policy be another subsidy to help companies pay wages?

Again, Muller looks rushed and unprepared.

Then there’s the loose language, which led Muller to end last week by saying “Most New Zealanders are unemployed, but they don’t know it yet”. Pardon me? Hyperbole is hardly a stranger to politics, but at a time of crisis that is a wild statement to toss out. Treasury’s worst-case scenario has unemployment rates hitting around 27 percent. Muller just flippantly doubled that number. In truth, given the government’s response so far, most predictions have unemployment hitting 10-15 percent. 

For Muller, in his first few days in charge of the party of supposed economic credibility, to predict “most” New Zealanders will lose their jobs, is inflammatory and reckless to say the least. It reeks of Steven Joyce’s $10 billion hole”; inflating bad stuff for party political ends. Guess what? Voters don’t like that.

The first impression Muller has left is of a leader not ready to lead, a new parent who hasn’t got the cot built. This sort of rattled incompetence kept Labour in Opposition for three terms. National must be hoping that Muller and Kaye learn quickly so that voters at least aren’t grimacing and turning away as they try to introduce themselves less than four months out from the election.