A Different Kind of Power – book review

I didn’t know political biographies could be like this. There’s not a nasty bone in its body. I haven’t read a book so uplifting for a long time but I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, Jacinda Ardern’s signature is kindness. No one was expecting she’d take the opportunity now she has left office and living overseas to get stuck into the dozens of goons she must have had to deal with on a daily basis.

I suppose, like me, many people think we know Jacinda on a first name basis; we invited her into our homes daily during lockdown and, no matter how the fear gripped us, we appreciated the straightforward talk of the messenger, even those who didn’t always like the message. Be kind, she said. That, as it turns out, is not a manufactured political slogan, but a manifesto for life.

However, beyond all the politics and the messages, I enjoyed A Different Kind of Power for itself. It reads like a novel. It is well constructed, with clear character development, plot (small-town girl to global superstar is a pretty good plot!), tension, well-formed sentences, wit. A good mix of deeply serious shit with a few self-deprecating laughs. There was no sense of point-scoring or power play. It feels authentic, a book written from the heart by someone with an interesting story to tell and some good things to say.

Everyone can take their own messages from this biography. I read it through a feminist lens, as a call to women assert our values, to use vulnerability as strength and to stand up for our beliefs. To build the expectation that making the world a better place is the responsibility of us all. There is a huge emphasis on community in Ardern’s story – you don’t do this stuff alone, not in politics or on the domestic front, either. Raising a child is not the responsibility of a mother and helpers (the old ‘dad helping with the babysitting’ idea). Ardern offers the premise that a family raises a child, although she is human enough to suffer mum-guilt at birthday cake failure and is torn by her absences from Neve. Clarke copes just fine and makes a good cake. Perhaps a woman can feel this as a ‘missing out’ rather than a ‘guilt’. She’s lucky with her extended whanau (held tight by love and a strong moral compass). Not everyone has that, but there are also ‘found families’ in this story. Ardern talks about her colleagues as friends and whanau. And perhaps she got the whanau she deserved. We grow up with the responsibility to build our own communities, and going in with kindness is a very good base.

There is a lot of gratitude in this story and lots of names included, with many reminiscences. We see political colleagues like Grant Robertson, Raj Nahna, Juliet Gerrard and others turn into dear friends. Supporters are valued and embraced. Ardern barely mentions those who fought against her.

Her rise to power was not magic. She puts it down to swatting. Swatting for the debating team at school, for wrapping a perfect packet of chips (practice with a cabbage), for names and situations, for briefing papers, on a plane, in a car, in bed. When she visits a factory she remembers details of how the product is made. She has a big brain, a memory for detail and reads around everything. She swats and swats some more, though she now calls it prep. She was a nerdy kid and might have become introverted but, growing up as a Mormon, she was made to put herself forward, to knock on the doors of strangers and offer to help to make their lives better. It’s something she is still doing though the message has changed. She left the church behind when she developed her own set of values, and after leading her country through six years of crises, now is a best-selling author, a talk-show star, an educator and runs forums on a different kind of power, a power based on kindness. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she still goes out knocking on doors occasionally, asking if there is anything she can do to help.

Sure, Arden has had her detractors over the years. We put our politicians up, expect miracles and when they don’t achieve our demands we smash them down and try someone else. Running a country is an impossible gig in a throw-away culture. Perhaps we can change our expectations about that and work towards a world run by a democratically elected community of moral, kind people, rather than the hit men who do so much damage. Feels like I’ve taken a woke potion, and I love it.

If a young girl from Waikato wants to help make a difference in the lives of people around her, here is proof that she can. Which, of course, translates easily into – yes, you can.