They call it hanging a lantern on your problem. It came to prominence after a former Congressional staffer in Washington, DC, Chris Matthews wrote Hardball, a book that’s still an enduring reference work for political operators everywhere.

There’s nothing new in spinning a negative into a positive but we can date the present approach to the 1980s and 1990s with former Republican President Ronald Reagan providing the best example.

As he approached re-election in 1984 for a possible second term, Reagan’s age was questioned, especially after a lacklustre performance in the first presidential debate against the Democratic challenger Walter Mondale.

As then the oldest man to serve in the White House, Reagan was always going to attract this attention. Everyone from Newsweek to some of his own political allies were asking questions and The Wall Street Journal featured a front page piece asking whether the president was “showing his age”.

The Reagan team knew they had one chance to kill this off in the next debate. Campaign Svengali Lee Atwater had a simple piece of advice in a memo: obscure the negative, own the issue and turn it back on the opponent.

When age came up Reagan was tersely direct: “I will not make my age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience”.

Even the Democrat Mondale was filmed chuckling on the debate stage. In two crisp sentences the issue was dead and buried and Mondale’s experience was pushed to the fore. It remains one of the great moments in modern politics.

This discursive introduction serves to illustrate the brilliance of Scott Morrison’s appearance on Channel 9’s Sixty Minutes this past weekend.

After a week which would have most politicians screaming into the darkness at 2am, the Prime Minister went on the once high-rating current affairs show (it attracted less than two thirds of the audience who tuned in for the preceding Married At First Sight) to be interviewed, in a series of settings, by Karl Stefanovic.

The pair chatted in the office, in the lounge at the PM’s official Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, with his wife Jenny, and during an alfresco meal with the family, including daughters Lily and Abbey.

It was carefully constructed and – as much as you can in these situations – scripted. Given the interviews were first discussed with Nine before Christmas 2021, you can be sure it was war-gamed to within a margin of error pollsters get rich on.

Morrison was, as always, mentally prepared to let the best, research driven answers flow freely. From the homespun look at the Facebook famous Massaman curry through a glimpse of saying grace (including a mention of Jesus) before the dinner to a faith-heavy anecdote about “wearing out the carpet” next to his bed because of the relentless praying on his knees during the pandemic, this was Morrison doing what he does better than anything else – selling himself.

As good as Morrison was – and he was very good – the best performer was Jenny. Listening to her talk sympathetically about her husband was to unlock nods of agreement in middle Australian households, many in the sizeable and essential group of voters the prime minister needs for his “second coming” re-election.

She talked about someone whose greatest fault is being married to the job, that Morrison was such a problem solver he could be seen as lacking empathy but he was the best person to be prime minister.

In this bravura performance, the best and most impactful element came when Stefanovic asked about the time still regarded by so many Australians as the biggest disappointment of the Morrison leadership – the “secret” holiday in Hawaii, the insouciance about the bushfires and the image-killing “I don’t hold a hose, mate” riposte.

This is how Jenny characterised this brutal error from the summer of 2019/20: “I am more than sorry if we disappointed. Did we make the right decision? I thought I was making the right decision for my kids. I obviously was wrong. Yes, we were over there seeing it and we were like … we really need to get home. So … I wish that had never happened. But I can’t change it.”

Morrison sat by her side, looking like he’d been caught smoking and nodding in agreement at the collateral admonishment.

For many Australians this would have softened the negativity of the bushfire debacle. They might have retained a sense it was wrong but Jenny Morrison has given them permission to shake it off.

Of course, those who have a brutal antipathy to Morrison, amplified by the handling of the bushfires, will not have one thought about the Prime Minister altered. They will regard the whole Sixty Minutes fireside chat as a cynical ploy (and it was) and think less of him. He didn’t have their votes anyway.

The other big positive out of this appearance was another trusty political device: compare and contrast.

As the official election campaign gets closer, the government is cranking its negativity machine and aiming it at Labor’s Anthony Albanese. As we’ve noted, a fast track to another win is to reprise the character assassination of the alternative, in a similar manner to the way Bill Shorten was shown the exit sign in 2019.

The Channel 9 show didn’t dwell on Albanese but Morrison knows his compare and contrast efforts would have been noted – even subliminally – in households around the country.

Morrison as a practicing man of faith, in a family where faith is shown as important, explaining his big regret was leaving Jenny for two weeks in high school – it’s a story that trumps growing up in a single mother household in Sydney’s inner west.

Morrison demonstrated at the weekend he has the skill to check-list his negatives and the ability to maintain a connection to middle Australia – even in the midst of a political firestorm.

The Labor Opposition leader, who’s due to have a similar feature about himself broadcast by Nine in a few weeks, should be alert and a little alarmed.