I miss Jens Stoltenberg

Writer: Martin Hansebråten

Illustrator: Anna Bjørke

I miss Jens Stoltenberg. He was likeable. He meant things, and he did things. Most people seemed to think he was a great bloke. Stoltenberg is not dead, of course, but the chance that he makes a comeback in Norwegian politics in the future, is very slim. Stoltenberg was the country’s leader when I was little. Years without covid, Trump, existential crises and stressed nights at the study hall, desperately trying to finish assignments that should have been done a week ago. Life had not yet caught up with me. Choices had not been made, enemies had not been found, love had not been lost.

In a way, Jens has been representing my nostalgia for the past. A past that maybe was not so great, because things were not so great in the old days either. But I am still left with a feeling of missing things how they once were.

It’s not really Jens I’m missing. I miss a political management of the institutions around us. Boards of people that have an ideological reason for doing what they are doing. People with an idea about what they are going to do and are working for that. No “public management” business, with people managing for the sake of it. I miss democracy playing a role; that people holding important positions (ahem, rector) are chosen by everyone, not just some invisible committee consisting of people who “know” what they are doing. I miss people who say as they do and do as they say.

After a bit more research, you find out that Jens is known for being pragmatic, without much of an ideology. This completely contradicts my impression of him from when I was a kid. “Don’t meet your heroes” as they say, but there was something about him, something that you don’t find in the people who came after him. Let’s take Jonas Gahr Støre, for example. He is pragmatic as well, but to be honest, I don’t know a lot of people who like him.

Why is that? Because of prejudice. Yes, partly, but that is not the point. I think it’s about the spirit of our time. In this day and age, you need an ideology to be in charge of things. You need clear goals. You cannot be in charge of things just for the sake of it. “Boomers” in USA miss the old days, and maybe I do too. But while the boomers choose to vote for Trump to get wives back in the kitchen, I think we need to make a future that is our own.

But of course, you long for the good, old days. But living with a vague sense of missing the past might not be the answer. Life is hard, mate. It was easier before.