Helen Clark - Adventures in America

Helen Clark is New Zealand's most consistently successful international stage Prime Minister / Diplomat this little country so far away from everywhere has had in its short Western political history. But it is the history before that - the history of the land, the people of the land - carved into mountains and logs and waves and koru and smiles.

There are a few things America could learn from New Zealand and it is precisely odd that a beseiged Republican should face a matured student radical who attended every important protest in her rugged University years. But this is now, and what seemed suprising in the 1960s is now merely history. Helen Clark is the mouse that may roar she has such international gravitas that many picked her as Kofi Annan's logical successor.

President Bush would do well to listen to whatever she has to say. He is, afterall, in a spot of bother. Helen Clark has shown remarkable resilience to silly attacks but what serious blunders has she committed? Most would say the pledge card, but it has served to keep Labour's aims in the mind of the electorate and all that publicity has probably helped when it comes down to it.

Those little business card sized promotional contracts between Government and Citizen were also Helen's idea. Compare it with the uncounted Florida votes that saw Bush become President. His cardboard crime probably killed more trees.