The Cutting Nature of Politics

Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

The Cutting Nature of Politics

January 11, 2008

By Cormac MacConnell

AS ye know by now I’m occasionally wryly drawn to the political sphere. That is very much the case in the early days of this new January when there are intriguing political developments on both sides of the Atlantic.

I’m writing this on the eve of the New Hampshire battle on your side of the ocean. Given the close links between Ireland and America, it is not surprising there is so much informed interest over here in your presidential campaign, in what happened so dramatically in Iowa, in what will happen in New Hampshire and further down the primary route to nomination and power.

I bet that there are many Irish people who have never visited the U.S. who know more about the mechanics of what is going on over there than many Americans. We love the business of politics over here at every level, have a great national knowledge of our own very complicated PR voting system (especially in the west) and, let’s face it, have donated much to the American system too.

For what it is worth then, from a man who never met a single American in the last three years who was a Bush supporter, the prevailing view in the west of Ireland is that Barack Obama is emerging as something special, as a breath of fresh air.

Wise men who can foretell who will win the last seat after 10 running counts under the PR system in one of our constituencies are already predicting that he will break many moulds before this race is won, could well take the Democratic nomination from an increasingly harried looking Hillary Clinton but, after all that, will need all the miracles he can get to actually reach the White House.

I wonder how accurate our oldsters are. I stitch their predictions into the record anyway.

On a personal level I have to say that the man is blowing down the trail like a real breath of fresh air, and it should not matter in the end what color his skin is, what his middle name sounds like, or if, like about all his generation internationally, he smoked a few joints as part of his oats-sowing years. The weeks ahead are going to be very interesting indeed.

We have very interesting political events here at home as well. It is totally fascinating to watch the beginning of the end for Bertie Ahern, our current taoiseach (prime minister). His predecessor and political mentor Charlie Haughey had retired and made port before his legacy was destroyed by inquiries and tribunals which revealed the grubby details of his personal finances.

Ahern, still in office, still the country’s leader and the leader of his Fianna Fail party, is now daily suffering the Chinese torture of the Death By a Thousand Cuts whilst still in office. It is grisly to observe the way it is happening.

He has said he will not lead his most pragmatic of parties into the next election. His current government, the last of a series he dramatically and cutely led to success after success, is foundering by the day. One can confidently predict that it will not run its full term.

As if Ahern has lost his touch totally, his government spins from crisis to crisis. Meanwhile, the merciless cross-examination of the man himself about his personal finances, dig-outs from friends, loans and gifts almost daily exposes some new matter which leads to further questioning and further suspicions about his explanations to date.

And those who hope to succeed him are subtly distancing themselves from a figurehead already somehow tainted by all the revelations about his private life.

And the pragmatic party itself, without saying a public word (yet), is also moving away from a leader described once by Haughey as the most cunning and ruthless of them all. And he was a good judge.

It is not pretty to watch, but by God it is compelling.

I guess it will be over soon one way or another. I also guess that maybe the real consequence of what is happening to Bertie nowadays is that there will be no big European job available to him (a la John Bruton for example) once all his domestic trials and tribulations are over.

And they multiply, directly or indirectly, by the day. Last weekend’s papers, for example, reported that the legendary Paddy “The Plasterer” friend who was among those involved in the “dig out” donations in now himself in trouble with the taxman.

It’s petty stuff in the Plasterer’s case, but that’s the way the slow torment of the Death By a Thousand Cuts goes, hurtful little nicks and cuts all along the way.

And, I wonder, has that process begun too over there with Hillary Clinton?

I saw an RTE bulletin tonight. She and Bertie both featured in separate political stories.

Both were snarling at their critics on exactly the same frequency.

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