100 days of solitude (Patreon)

It's been a curious strategy that team Muller has been taking in terms of getting New Zealand familiar with the would-be Prime Minister.

On his opening day as leader he made a passably acceptable speech and was asked about his relative anonymity. He said that he hoped he'd be on the news that night. Ho ho ho we laughed.

Except after a few days' blitz of political media - the Nation, Q&A, Breakfast etc - he's all but vanished.

This might be because all of those interviews above where absolute trainwrecks with flappy giant arms and no ideas, or it might be some galaxy brain shit with his media strategy.

In this time as leader, National has rolled out a couple of meh policies - and weirdly on Fridays. Days where you get the least coverage and everyone has forgotten about whatever it was you said by Monday. Weirdly he's doing a speech where he'll be talking about his own values and vision this Sunday afternoon, in Te Puna.  

New Zealand is no closer to knowing who the fuck Todd Muller is than we were three weeks ago. And there's not a lot of time before people can start voting (83 days in fact).

I'm not the only one who has noticed too. MPs from a range of parties have been bewildered by Todd's start. They thought that with the knifing of Simon, that National might come roaring back. But there has been no roar. Not even a whimper. 

Worse for Todd is that media are starting to chatter too. I've had several conversations the last few days where both Todd's and Nikki's performance with media has been described in such colourful ways as "fucking piss poor", "like drinking tea that's 90% milk", "uncomfortable to be a part of". 

The second of his weird-ass policy announcements came on the side of a mountain in Queenstown where Todd uncomfortably stood in a suit. On a mountain. Media was given less than 24 hours notice that it was happening and by putting it in Queenstown gave them no chance of getting there to cover it. There were literally no flights to Queenstown when one news agency found out about it.

Since then he's gone to ground - now he has had surgery and is recovering from that, but it's just been so weirdly invisible. In the words of one reporter "he's spent more time at home in three weeks as leader than Bridges did in 18 months". 

Now you might say this doesn't matter, the media hates National, rahrahrah, but if you're invisible to the media, you're largely invisible to the country.

Other journalists have said they're disappointed. They expected better. They like Todd but he's just utterly hopeless. 

The team at the head of Todd's strategy is Matthew Hooton, Janet Wilson, and Megan Campbell - all of whom are very good operators. But all of whom have been out of Wellington and parliament for a while. Maybe they're past it and things now move too quickly. Whatever it is, Todd is starting to look not just Shearer-esque. But like Jeb!.

Simon Bridges was not a good leader. I disagreed with just about everything he stood for, but at least I knew what he stood for. He was out there, making his case.

Todd is just a pair of long arms with nothing in-between.