A man of 'flexible' opinion
Mark Rutte is comedian, chameleon, pianist and soon-to-be the Netherlands' longest-serving prime minister.
LET’S START WITH that line from David Bowie’s 1971 album Hunky Dory, as promised in my last Vlog. “He’s comedian, chameleon, Corinthian and caricature,” sang Bowie in Bewlay Brothers. I’m sorry. No obvious comparison connects the late, great iconoclast and rock legend to the serving Dutch prime minister. Please forgive one analogy.
In the Netherlands, either it’s hunky dory: a stable, well-run, rather boring success - gidsland, literally ‘guide country’ - and an example for Europe. Or, depending on your point of view, the wheels are coming off in Dutch politics: the parties are so fragmented that serial coalition governments are incapable of reform, while a self-serving nostalgia hides bureaucratic inertia and urgent social problems.
Both sides of the argument can make a credible claim, from well-informed champions.
Simon Kuper, Financial Times magazine columnist, argued for the optimists in Lessons from the Netherlands in staying in power. Kuper, who grew up here, lists the good fortune of a small population with high wages, decent welfare, short working hours, long holidays, and the best pensions in Europe after Denmark (according to Mercer, a consulting firm).
Most Dutch voters report a high degree of satisfaction with their lives, reported Kuper. Occasional problems pale by comparison: the “leisurely” vaccine roll-out, racism in the government algorithms exposed by the simmering child benefit scandal, a resurgent far-right fringe in parliament and outside. Even recent rioting amounts to little more than ‘a little local difficulty’ (Kuper didn’t include this phrase, but I was reminded of an oft-repeated aside from British prime minister Harold Macmillan).
The opposing camp is more worried. Caroline de Gruyter, Europe correspondent for NRC, argued in Foreign Policy that the biggest problems in the Netherlands are the same as in the United States. For all their superficial differences, “Dutch - like Americans and other Europeans - want a government that works. What they have is a system that’s stuck”.
For De Gruyter, both countries suffer from ‘kludgeocracy’ - a political system that is unequal to the task of reforming itself. This is the obstacle facing President Joe Biden’s new administration in the US, where the public realm often feels irrelevant to the needs of the population. Ditto in the Netherlands, where even the resignation of the entire cabinet on January 15 heralded a return to business as usual - as I wrote here in Rutte’s bloodless finale.
Which view you find most credible is likely to depend on your appreciation - or lack - of two factors: one general, one specific. The general factor is your respect for Dutch political culture in its broadest sense. The specific factor is your opinion of Mark Rutte in particular, a politician distinguished by his longevity and a tendency to “flexible” opinions: de flexibele opiniemaker, as the Volkskrant put it.
A knack for winning
In Politico, British writer Ben Coates, a long-term Dutch resident (and now citizen) summarised the position: the Dutch have much to be grateful for, but the foundation myths of the Netherlands is “losing its shine”. Confused handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has dented a reputation for competence, tolerance and cooperation - a near-mythical self-image captured in deep nostalgia for the ‘Polder model’.
On the thorny question of how much specific responsibility for this unraveling may lie with the prime minister, opinion is predictably divided. The evidence is abundant to frame Rutte as a savvy pragmatist, who has deftly avoided the rejection and defeat met by UK prime minister David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy, his former peers in the European centre-right.
Young Mark Rutte was impatient to ‘leave the band’, but he never escaped the long shadow of a bourgeois family infused with ‘melancholy for old Europe’
To his detractors, Rutte is a kind of Trojan horse - the harbinger of a deep antipathies that have corroded liberal democracy. Here, again, a comparison is often made to France where Sarkozy mishandled the populist surge from the far-right with such aggression that he alienated conservative supporters in his own camp.
Similarly, Rutte simultaneously borrowed from the anti-immigration rhetoric of the far-right, but proved more effective - so far - in his attempts to outmanoeuvre Gert Wilders’ nationalist PVV, Freedom Party, and Thierry Baudet’s FvD, Forum for Democracy in parliament. Whether that success is due more to the eccentricity of his opponents, or to Rutte’s strategic mind, is moot.
Instead of Sarkozy’s aggressive posturing, Rutte cultivated a reputation as level-headed, managerial and technocratic: he entered politics from a career in middle management at Unilever. So it feels timely to recall an oft-quoted axiom attributed more than a half-century ago to the late Peter Drucker, a pioneer of management consulting: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
Liberal, without conviction
In a much-scrutinised speech from 2013, Rutte shared unusual details about his upbringing and political roots. His parents were from a generation shaped by post-war austerity: they started with nothing, twice. They worked hard and never complained. Speaking at the H.J. Schoolezing, an annual lecture in honour of a late sub-editor at the Volkskrant, Rutte rejected big ideas in politics. Vision was “an elephant that obstructs the view”.
Rutte’s analogy “fits completely” into the stereotype of a Dutch administrative elite suspicious of ideology and abstractions, noted Jouke Huizer in the Dutch Review of Books - Nederlandse Boekengids. “I don't believe in comprehensive blueprints that could be used to solve social problems in one fell swoop. As a liberal, that always makes me a bit suspicious,” Rutte explained.
Commentators and satirists alike seized on his remarks as a revelation of the prime minister’s political DNA, albeit not much of this political ‘credo’ was really new. A first biography, Mark Rutte: Only for Politics (Terra, 2010) by Martijn van der Kooij and Dirk van Harten, portrayed a “modest young gentleman” with a talent for administration but a notable absence of political ideals.
He argued for more nuclear power, more renewables - from solar, wind, biofuels and geothermal - and, simultaneously, against penalties for carbon emissions or new taxes on diesel or flying
Their book was rushed to press in 2010, even before negotiations to form Rutte’s first cabinet were complete. Rutte is cast as a brave opportunist, conservative by instinct but with astute timing. His rapid rise to power is triggered by a high-stakes gamble, when Rutte’s no-confidence motion in parliament secured rivals’ support to topple his predecessor Jan Peter Balkenende’s PvdA-led coalition.
A review in Parool noted Rutte’s bourgeois upbringing which, the authors inferred, explained his worldview “stuck in traditions and customs”. An only child, Rutte drove an old Saab and dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. He was impatient to break free - to “leave the band” - but from adopting the liberal credentials that Rutte later sought, his upbringing was infused with “melancholy for old Europe”.
Chameleon by nature (and nurture)
The results of the 2021 election may seem a foregone conclusion at the ballot box. If Rutte can hold another coalition together for the next 18 months, he’ll earn a place in history as the Netherlands’ longest-serving prime minister. But the political complexion of Rutte IV, the next cabinet, is far harder to predict.
‘If a yellow jacket movement threatens to emerge in the Netherlands, Rutte puts on such a vest himself and gives the impression that he is on the side of the critics’ - Jouke Huizer
The prime minister’s “corona bonus” was rapidly melting away in the polls, reckoned another biographer, Sheila Sitalsing, in the Volkskrant - de coronabonus van de premier in rap tempo aan het wegsmelten is. His VVD party would have a “big mouth” - een grote mond - in negotiations to form a government, but an “extensive coalition” was inevitable. That could go either way: rightwards, leftwards or somewhere in-between - rechtsom of linksom of iets daartussenin. Everything was open – alles ligt nog open.
That malleable make-up would suit the instincts described by Sitalsing’s 2016 book, Mark: Portrait of a Prime Minister (Prometheus). In the 1990s, Rutte argued for a power-sharing coalition between the centre-right VVD and the PvdA, labour party. By the 2000s, he leaned in the opposite direction towards a Green-Right alliance.
In 2008, Rutte published Pamphlet of an Optimist. In just seven pages, his brief polemic called for more energy independence, more nuclear power, more renewables - from solar, wind, biofuels and geothermal - and, simultaneously, argued against penalties for carbon emissions or new taxes on diesel or flying.
After ousting Rita Verdonk in a close contest for the VVD party leadership, Rutte came to power in 2010. A right-leaning alliance with parliamentary support from Gert Wilders’ PVV, Rutte I pledged to restore stability in the wake of the global financial crisis. In parliament, Rutte’s straight answers and plain language were compared favourably to Balkenende. All long since forgotten.
Kludgeocracy
A term first coined by US political scientist Steven Teles, kludgeocracy describes a state of complexity beset by inertia, a problem too big for the government. Journalist Ezra Klein gave this concept new currency in a January 2013 article Is America a ‘kludgeocracy’? for the Washington Post. De Gruyter asks the same question of the Netherlands, a system of government by ‘quick fixes’.
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