By Katharine Murphy
There's something going on with people who watch politics for a living. Call it a sudden thirst for silence. I've found myself craving it lately, a reaction to our aggressive and unremitting national ''conversation'' and the cacophony of modern life.
One of my favourite American columnists, Peggy Noonan, last week advised President Barack Obama, in the middle of a terrible game of chicken with Republicans on the US debt crisis, to deploy ''strategic silence''.
Does Julia Gillard ever get silence?Credit: Wayne Taylor
Given that Noonan once shaped the utterances of Ronald Reagan as his artful and elegant speechwriter, this seemed quite a declaration. ''Recent presidents forget to shut up,'' she said. ''They lose sight of how grating they are.''
In Australia, political columnists have been mulling the ''strategic silence'' concept as well, offering the Prime Minister tips about how to deal with her political woes. The Noonan dictum has been taken for a walk in various domestic guises - drop the surround-sound carbon tax campaign (it's not working); do less feeding the television beast (you look trivial); the problem is you, Prime Minister, so best get out of the way (it's all terminal, just give up).
A few points here. Truth is we in the media play a double game. In contemplative mode we counsel Julia Gillard to be still; then in reporting mode we deadline junkies contradict our own counsel by craving daily content. We get restless if she doesn't emerge.
Strategists around the PM get twitchy because Tony Abbott rushes to fill the space, accusing her of ''surrender'' and other heinous crimes against the polity. The news cycle thunders on without her: always a strategist's worst nightmare - except, of course, the strategy isn't actually working, it is diminishing her in increments.
The ''for God's sake shut up Julia'' line of analysis - seductive as it is - only gets us so far in the real world.
Gillard is the Prime Minister. Public leadership is an intrinsic part of the job description. She can't be hidden just because the voters don't like her.
But she can make some choices about how and when she presents herself to the voters. She can atone for past mistakes. She can defy the worst fears of colleagues now convinced that it's game over by looking inside herself for capacity that she has not yet demonstrated. It's not courage or determination or intelligence that's lacking, there's plenty of that. Fundamentally, it's capacity.
In that spirit I'd like to reflect a little more on silence - both the strategic silence Noonan speaks of, and the principle of quiet more generally.
The Prime Minister went a couple of days last week without public events. Presumably she was governing. Or resting. Or both.
Did the sky fall in? No, it did not. In fact, it was the first period in a long time in which federal politics was able to reach a resting pulse rate.
Normal business ensued. A tax summit discussion paper emerged, the carbon tax legislation was produced. In short, there was welcome respite from the world's longest and most unfulfilling election campaign.
The public silence from Camp Gillard was strategic; they were gathering after a relentless few months. If you've got the courage for it, here's what a pause in the play can do: allow time for thinking, listening, recalibrating.
Perhaps it's circumstances - minority government, a hostile media environment, a ferocious combatant in Abbott - that drives Gillard to run and frame her incumbency like she never actually won an election.
She presents most days as if she still has to fight the campaign - the discourse is all hard, fast and shallow, all pictures and backdrops, lines cooked up pre-dawn, hot pink hard hats and fluoro.
But the impression of the permanent campaign corrodes and devalues the governing.
There is a lot of reasonable debate at the moment about who is driving whom to what dire straits in politics - is it the media imposing shallowness and shrillness and discordance on the debate, or is it politics as it seeks new ways to control the discourse and limit genuine insight?
But this finger pointing obscures a more simple truth. Every prime minister has a choice about how to approach their tenure; dancing to anyone's tune is optional.
Perhaps Gillard has simply lacked the opportunity for a moment's reflection. Which takes me to the other silence, the intrinsic kind, which in my view is more important than the strategic kind.
Does the Prime Minister ever get silence? Once she spoke of having ''cone time'' in her office.
Australian author Kim Scott expressed it beautifully earlier this year when, having won the Miles Franklin Award, he was asked what advice he'd have for politicians if he fell into conversation with them. ''Get yourself in a bit of silence sometimes and listen,'' Scott said.
Does the Prime Minister ever just turn off the phone, sit on the couch, shut the door and reflect - how did I get into this mess, and how might I get myself out of it?
That's a very personal silence - life not quite panning out as you'd planned, reflecting on the enormity of that, wondering how to respond to an alternative view of yourself.
It takes courage to sit in that silence, because that silence can speak to you. Once you emerge from that silence, almost anything can happen.
Katharine Murphy is Age national affairs correspondent.
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