“Donald Trump looks as if he was playing a President in a porn movie.” This was Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle’s scathing put down of the Donald on BBC radio four’s News Quiz last Friday.
Maybe it is something to do with the Donald’s addiction to calling everything ‘huge’ (or as he says it: huuuuuge ) and lauding his own achievements with outlandish superlatives but Boyle’s taunt perfectly captures Trump’s OTT and hammy public appearances.
Trump’s emergence as a real contender for the White House has surprised most pundits including – if one of his former publicists is to be believed – himself.
How could this gauche, egotistical, property dealing demagogue tear up the US presidential campaign playbook and beat a string of long established Republican hopefuls?
Hard though we may find it to comprehend from this side of the Atlantic; but part of the Trump phenomenon is that he has teed-up this US presidential election to be a fight between the Washington insider: Hillary Clinton and the outsider: Trump.
This is an article I have written for the March 2014 Árd Fheis issue of Fianna Fáil’s members’ magazine Cuisle.
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A few months before the 2011 election, Michael Gallagher (the TCD Professor of Politics, not the Donegal postman and amateur weather forecaster) posted a blog where he asking how long Fianna Fáil could expect to spend in opposition. In it he wrote:
“Fianna Fáil is not a party accustomed to spending time there. Its longest spell on the opposition benches is still the nearly six years between its foundation in May 1926 and its entry into government in March 1932. Since then, the party has never spent more than one consecutive Dáil term in opposition and the longest spell it has been out of power remains the 4 years and 4 months of the Cosgrave coalition in the mid-1970s.”
Underpinning Gallagher’s 2010 comments is the idea that Fianna Fáil has never been that good at opposition. It is a fair point.
Not only have we not spent much time in opposition, as Gallagher points out, it is almost 30 years since we last spent a full Dáil term there.
My column on this weekend’s Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis from today’s Herald
If you are planning to head to Ballsbridge for a quiet pint or a cup of coffee this Friday or Saturday – think again. From about 5pm this Friday until well past mid-night on Saturday the area around the RDS will be saturated with about five thousand exuberant and excitable Fianna Fáil-ers gathered for the party’s Árd Fheis – including yours truly.
If you decide to follow the Árd Fheis proceedings online or on air you can expect to hear the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), whose fifteenth anniversary passed two weeks ago with little acknowledgement from the Government, mentioned several times.
Many in Fianna Fáil fear that its greatest recent political achievement is being slowly air brushed out of official history.
The impression is being given that the GFA was merely the logical and inevitable consequence of the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement, about which we have heard a lot following the deaths of both Garret Fitzgerald and Margaret Thatcher.
As one of many people who spent countless hours travelling up and down to Belfast on pre M1 roads that stopped for lollipop ladies in Balbriggan and Julianstown, I can assure you there was nothing inevitable about it.
But the Good Friday Agreement is also something of a metaphor for Fianna Fáil itself.
We now see that that getting agreement was the easier piece of work when compared with the effort and energy required to get it implemented and working – well, almost working.
The same is true of Fianna Fáil. The work required to get the party to this point has been huge, but it as nothing to the work ahead.
While last year’s Árd Fheis focused mainly on important internal reforms, such as One Member One Vote, the truly difficult work starts now.
This Árd Fheis is more about facing outwards and talking to an electorate who now shows signs of being ready to listen to what the party has to say. But the party’s improving opinion poll figures should not delude pundits, or even party members, to thinking its resurgence is assured.
To be brutally frank, what has Fianna Fail said or done in recent months to justify such increases? While it has produced some very fine policy proposals such as the Family Home Bill and Regulation of Debt Management Advisors Bill, they hardly account for bounce.
Nor does the performance of the party’s spokespeople.
Without doubt the party has scored significant hits on the government in recent months, particularly via its Health Spokesman Billy Kelliher, its Finance Spokesman Michael McGrath and its Justice Spokesman Niall Collins and, of course, the party leader Michéal Martin, but it is finding it difficult to mark all bases with such few Oireachtas personnel.
While he has several new people inside the Oireachtas who he can use effectively: such as Senators Averil Power and Marc McSharry, perhaps the leader also needs to look outside the ranks of the parliamentary party for other new faces and voices to put on Radio and TV in senior roles – Dublin Bay South’s Cllr Jim O’Callaghan for instance.
The hard truth is that the increases are as much down to Fine Gael and Labour’s travails as they are to any softening of attitude to Fianna Fáil. Besides, as the poll analysts would tell you, it is dangerous to read too much into opinion polls where over 30% of the respondents are answering: don’t know.
This is not to underestimate the size of what the party has achieved. At this time last year it was a tough job convincing others that while the party may be down, it was not finished. The big achievement has not been the increases in the polls, but rather the halt in the party’s decline.
At last year’s Árd Fheis the party helped reverse that decline by re-introducing itself to its own members, this weekend it starts the even great task of re-introducing itself to its former supporters. Let’s hope it has more success in doing that than the GFA has had in getting its institutions working.
My analysis of Wednesday night’s US Presidential Debate from tonight’s Evening Herald (Oct 4th 2012) .
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Before last night’s Obama/Romney debate the American political rulebook said that debates do not swing elections. While the debates can give a candidate a short term bounce, the trend after the debates tends to be the same as the trend before them.
Obama never mentioned Romney’s infamous 47%, though it seems Big Bird and pals are part of it.
Without a doubt Romney had a good night. But nothing happened in Denver to change the political rulebook. While commentators, especially the network TV ones, like to think that TV debates swing elections, the reality is that they haven’t.
Yes, there have been some incidents like President Bush Sr’s constant looking at his watch at the 1992 debate or President Ford’s assertion in the 1976 debate against Jimmy Carter that eastern Europe was not dominated by the USSR, but none of these reversed the course of the elections.
Bush Sr had started to lose ground to Clinton before the debate. Ford was trailing Carter badly by the time they debated. Indeed Ford only agreed to the debate because he was behind. Though we think these TV debates have been the norm in the US since the famous Nixon/Kennedy debates of 1960, the 1976 Carter/ Ford one was the first in 16 years.
Presidential debates by their nature tend to favour the challenger. The format raises the challenger’s status presenting the two candidates as equals. The challenger can put the President on the back foot by going on the attack and picking apart the incumbent’s record.
That is what Romney did last night, and he did it effectively.
While the current race is relatively tight, the polls have favoured Obama since before the summer. As with Carter in 1980 the Democrats should be in trouble. Polling suggests that Americans believe their country is on the wrong track by a margin of almost 20%. Optimism is on the decline. Only 43% of middle class Americans expect that their children’s standard of living will be better than their own. This compares to 51% four years ago.
These numbers should be poison for Obama and the Democrats and make the election a slam dunk for the Republicans, except the same Americans either do not understand or do not believe the alternative vision offered by Romney.
Romney’s people know this. He went into last night’s debate with a mission to change American’s views of him. He did himself some good in that regard. He not only went on the attack on Obama’s record he also scored several points in denying the Democrats portrayal of him as a tax cutter for the rich. The issue for him is that he did this at the expense of discussing the details of his alternative.
Perhaps his position behind Obama convinced him that he had nothing to lose with this approach, but the other risk for Romney is that his lurch to the centre may mean leaving some right wing voters at home?
In contrast, Obama seemed aloof and remote. He was reluctant to attack and take Romney on directly. This may have been a deliberate tactic. His people may have felt that scrapping and politicking with Romney wouldn’t look Presidential – he never mentioned Romney’s 47% remarks even once – however, it also meant that he allowed several very answerable attacks on his record go unchallenged.
While Romney didn’t land a knock out blow, he did win in terms of punches landed. He also did well in terms of appearance and body language, he dominated the debate. These things matter. This is television after all. We get as much information from what we see as what we hear.
Arguably the real impact these debates will have will be down to the clips the TV news shows choose to use in the coming days, though neither man gave a hostage to fortune. The late night comics will have fun with Romney’s threat to cut public funding for PBS and Big Bird, but I don’t see last night’s rather boring exchanges as switching anyone’s vote.
Romney may have won the debate – but I reckon he will still lose the election
My analysis of Wednesday night’s US Presidential Debate from tonight’s Evening Herald (Oct 4th 2012) .
—————————————————————————————————————-
Before last night’s Obama/Romney debate the American political rulebook said that debates do not swing elections. While the debates can give a candidate a short term bounce, the trend after the debates tends to be the same as the trend before them.
Obama never mentioned Romney’s infamous 47%, though it seems Big Bird and pals are part of it.
Without a doubt Romney had a good night. But nothing happened in Denver to change the political rulebook. While commentators, especially the network TV ones, like to think that TV debates swing elections, the reality is that they haven’t.
Yes, there have been some incidents like President Bush Sr’s constant looking at his watch at the 1992 debate or President Ford’s assertion in the 1976 debate against Jimmy Carter that eastern Europe was not dominated by the USSR, but none of these reversed the course of the elections.
Bush Sr had started to lose ground to Clinton before the debate. Ford was trailing Carter badly by the time they debated. Indeed Ford only agreed to the debate because he was behind. Though we think these TV debates have been the norm in the US since the famous Nixon/Kennedy debates of 1960, the 1976 Carter/ Ford one was the first in 16 years.
Presidential debates by their nature tend to favour the challenger. The format raises the challenger’s status presenting the two candidates as equals. The challenger can put the President on the back foot by going on the attack and picking apart the incumbent’s record.
That is what Romney did last night, and he did it effectively.
While the current race is relatively tight, the polls have favoured Obama since before the summer. As with Carter in 1980 the Democrats should be in trouble. Polling suggests that Americans believe their country is on the wrong track by a margin of almost 20%. Optimism is on the decline. Only 43% of middle class Americans expect that their children’s standard of living will be better than their own. This compares to 51% four years ago.
These numbers should be poison for Obama and the Democrats and make the election a slam dunk for the Republicans, except the same Americans either do not understand or do not believe the alternative vision offered by Romney.
Romney’s people know this. He went into last night’s debate with a mission to change American’s views of him. He did himself some good in that regard. He not only went on the attack on Obama’s record he also scored several points in denying the Democrats portrayal of him as a tax cutter for the rich. The issue for him is that he did this at the expense of discussing the details of his alternative.
Perhaps his position behind Obama convinced him that he had nothing to lose with this approach, but the other risk for Romney is that his lurch to the centre may mean leaving some right wing voters at home?
In contrast, Obama seemed aloof and remote. He was reluctant to attack and take Romney on directly. This may have been a deliberate tactic. His people may have felt that scrapping and politicking with Romney wouldn’t look Presidential – he never mentioned Romney’s 47% remarks even once – however, it also meant that he allowed several very answerable attacks on his record go unchallenged.
While Romney didn’t land a knock out blow, he did win in terms of punches landed. He also did well in terms of appearance and body language, he dominated the debate. These things matter. This is television after all. We get as much information from what we see as what we hear.
Arguably the real impact these debates will have will be down to the clips the TV news shows choose to use in the coming days, though neither man gave a hostage to fortune. The late night comics will have fun with Romney’s threat to cut public funding for PBS and Big Bird, but I don’t see last night’s rather boring exchanges as switching anyone’s vote.
Romney may have won the debate – but I reckon he will still lose the election
Who would want to be the leader of the Labour party today? No doubt Éamon Gilmore still does, though perhaps with a little less relish than he exuded last Monday when he was sitting cheerfully behind me on the early morning flight to Brussels.
The late Frank Cluskey – took a principled stand on Dublin Gas
While the dip in Labour’s fortunes revealed in the previous day’s RedC poll may not have demonstrably dampened his ardour, last night’s dramatic resignation by Roisín Shortall will.
Eighteen months in office and he is looking like the Mr Worthing character in the “Importance of Being Earnest:”: losing one Junior Minister, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.
But isn’t this what happens to the smaller party in Government? When they get into battles with the larger party, don’t they usually come out the worst?
A quick glance at the history of coalitions and it would appear otherwise.
The electoral reality is that going into office costs the smaller party seats at the next election. It takes the bigger risk and, in return, gets a say in policy above its Dáil strength.
That’s the deal. Both partners they know they need the other. It is not for eternity, maybe not even for the full five years of the term, but each knows that without the other neither would in power. unless one sees an alternative, in which case the balance is disturbed.
I served in two Fianna Fáil led coalitions featuring feisty junior partners: the Greens and the Progressive Democrats. While there were the occasional stand-offs, indeed one partly led to my departure, these were the exception to the rule.
Coalition work and last where there is a well negotiated and defined programme for government around which they can agree.
Naturally, where there are two distinct parties with their own hinterlands and approaches, there will be tensions. In my experience these were confined to issues not specifically covered in the Programme for Government or those thrown up by unexpected events.
The other main source of disruptions were the interventions from senior figures, just outside of government, in the smaller party who saw themselves as the conscience of their party, Dan Boyle was particular master of this dark art. While the major partner was usually the main target of these outbursts they were just as often designed to embarrass, irk and provoke their own ministers.
While deeply frustrating, these things came with the territory. The larger party in a coalition knows it needs the smaller one to stay in office. While it can never allow itself to be seen as a pushover, it also knew that the smaller party could not stay long in office if their members felt there were being used as a mudguard.
This is what makes Roisin Shortall’s resignation so significant. Unlike most ministerial resignations this was about policy. Yes, there are personality and political dimensions too, but essentially this is about adherence to the programme for government.
Her departure is reminiscent of the late Frank Cluskey’s 1983 resignation from Cabinet not only because it too was about policy, but also thanks to the increasing number of comparisons been drawn between both administrations’ handling of the economic problems facing them.
But, as with most parallels, it is not a perfect one. While his departure was a protest against Fine Gael’s stance on Dublin Gas, Shortall’s resignation is just as much about her own parties role in government as it is about Minister Reilly’s capacity to run a department.
When Frank Cluskey quit he made it clear that he did not expect other labour ministers to follow him out and bring down that government. There was no hint that he had lost any confidence in his colleagues. The feeling was mutual. At the meeting following his resignation he reportedly received a lengthy standing ovation from his parliamentary colleagues. Can Deputy Shortall expect to be cheered to the rafters by messers Quinn, Howlin, Gilmore and Rabbitte when they next week? I doubt it.
What is it about the position of chairman of the smaller party in government that makes them think they are the deputy leader of the opposition?
Labour’s parliamentary party chairman, Colm Keaveney is not a wet day in the job and already he is showing signs of the delusion.
Labour: In government or opposition?
He disowns government actions and policies like a member of the opposition while enjoying the privileges perks and access that being in office bring.
I call it “Dan Boyle Syndrome”. While the avuncular Cork man was not the first to exhibit the symptom, the condition reached such a virulent pitch during his time as the Green party chairman that he came to define the condition.
The most noted previous sufferer of the condition, one Michael McDowell, did occasionally present with chronic symptoms, including a slight political tourettes, but seemed to affect a recovery.
It is like a form of “Stockholm Syndrome”. In that; the subject comes to identify and sympathise with their captor, In “Dan Boyle Syndrome” the person loses any sympathy or attachment to their partners and projects themselves into the role of in-house opposition.
Deputy Keaveney’s angry reaction to the
latest round of health cuts, suggesting that it could precipitate an early election may have uttered with the intention of convincing the public that he was still on their side, but it only served to suggest that he still does not understand how government works.
Rather than convincing his voters that he is still on their side, they want him to convince his senior colleagues in government to start taking measures
The public is not impressed by politicians repeating their own concerns back to them. They want their representatives to reflect their views to those in authority, not reflect them back to those who hold them like a possessed hall of mirrors.
The public get the difference between government and opposition. They understand the fundamental truth of Mario Cuomo’s famous maxim: “you campaign in poetry but you govern in prose”.
Doubtless Deputy Keaveney is getting a lot of hassle and criticism from people he meets on the street. As a first time Deputy; sitting on the government backbenches; he may gaze longingly at the Fianna Fáil benches wishing he were there opposing and criticising the tough and unpopular choices that government brings, but he would do well to remember the words of Mary Harney: “Even the worst day in government was better than the best day in opposition”.
Though it may not seem like it to Deputy Keaveney now, Harney’s counsel is right, but only if you believe politics is about changing things and improving society.
Having worked in government and opposition, I know and understand the strains and pressures of both. I am not totally unsympathetic to Deputy Keaveny’s plight, but being sympathetic is not the same as supportive.
If he seriously believes that he will firewall himself and his party colleagues from the approaching barrage of criticism and unpopularity, then he is in for a bad surprise.
Just google “Dan Boyle” and “election results” and he will see how his tactics failed. While other Greens, like Trevor Sargent and Eamon Ryan saw their vote collapse by between 40% and 50% last year, Boyle’s already low vote (he had lost his Dáil seat in 2007) dropped by almost 70%.
If Deputy Keaveney truly finds it impossible to reconcile the platform he was elected upon with the policies his party is pursuing in office then he can follow the example of his three former colleagues: Willie Penrose, Tommy Broughan and Patrick Nulty and resign the Labour whip in the Dáil.
They were not the only three Oireachtas members elected on a labour ticket missing from the five star Carton House think in. as reported here last Wednesday, three Labour senators also stayed away.
A sign to Deputy Keaveney, perhaps, that if he still around next year he may be chairing an even smaller gathering.
My column on the Chris Andrews Twittergate fiasco from today’s (Mon August 13th 2012) Evening Herald
Anonymous Tweets
I am not exactly sure how I feel about Chris Andrews today. I have known him personally for over 25 years. We are near contemporaries. I have campaigned alongside him and, on a couple of occasions, for him. He managed to so something I repeatedly failed to do: to get elected.
In his case that meant serving as a Dublin City Councillor and a TD for the Dublin South East constituency. His defeat in the great Fianna Fáil wipeout of February 2011 was not a reflection on his work as a local representative.
He came closer than many to hanging on in a constituency that has not be traditional FF territory. His work rate meant that the tide which engulfed him was not nearly as severe as that which washed away so many others.
For these reasons I feel sorry to see him exit politics.
But there is another side too. Like many of his friends and supporters I am deeply angered by the report in yesterday’s Sunday Independent of his antics in setting up a fake twitter account to attack Fianna Fáil.
This anger is twofold. It is an anger at his actions and his attempts to glorify them by presenting himself now as some victim, but it is also an anger at his betrayal of the trust of supporters and colleagues, like me.
No matter how much he may seek to convince himself otherwise, Chris is no victim.
He is no principled dissenter or critic being silenced out by an intolerant leadership. His actions were petty and self serving. He hid behind a fake account (@brianfornerFF) and sniped at perceived political rivals in the hope of bringing them down and advancing himself.
I engaged with his fake persona on Twitter a few times, mistakenly believing it what that of a disillusioned young member. After a few exchanges I quickly realised that it was nothing of the sort, though I never suspected it was Chris.
There was nothing noble or admirable in his comments, Most were just bitchy and sneering rants at colleagues. The only “political” thread in his exchanges with me was his expressed disdain for political dynasties, a little ironic now given the source.
The comical point in all of this is that the real Chris Andrews and I were exchanging messages on twitter at the same time as the fake tweets.
I, like others, had become an audiences for Chris’s one man performance of his own “Philadelphia Here I Come”. Unlike Friel’s “Gar Public” and “Gar Private” his were not the inner and outer voices of the same person, one expanding upon and setting the context for the utterances of the other.
Quite the opposite. While “official Chris” publicly expressed support and praise for the party “Continuity Chris” was lashing out at those seeking to reform and rebuild. He did occasionally take pot shots at the leadership and senior figures, but his targets were mainly local.
It was all a game, and a pointless one at that.
There was no great point of principle at stake here. His attacks and indeed his departure was not about the party’s stand on the Fiscal Treaty Referendum, no more than it was about its support of Gay marriage or a reformed Seanad.
This was about high politics or the future, it was about low politics and the past. It was about settling old scores and doing it out of sight, hidden behind a screen.
It was about the worst of the old politics, which makes his parting shot, his suggestion that dissent and criticism is not tolerated in FF, all the more galling.
Because of his age, his location and indeed his background Chris was uniquely placed to play a part in crafting and determining whatever future Fianna Fáil may have. The pity is that he rejected that opportunity – it did not reject him. This is what makes me both sad and angry.
My Evening Herald column from last Saturday (23rd June 2012)
Lobby of The Willard Hotel in DC Pic courtesy of biberfan on flickr
I have an aversion to the term: lobbyist. I resisted its use in describe myself when I worked with a range of national representative groups and I can’t recall ever using it to describe those whom I dealt with while I was a ministerial adviser.
The term “lobbyist” seems to have a pejorative tone to it. Lobbying is viewed with suspicion. Understandable enough after the Tribunal horror stories of men in well cut suits loitering outside Council chambers offering “incentives” to errant Councillors.
The reality is that lobbying is a practice as old as government itself. The origins of the term are often erroneously attributed to the post Civil War US President, Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant was fond of retiring to the bar of the old Willard Hotel across from the White House. News of his habit soon spread and he increasingly found himself besieged by promoters of this or that project as he passed through the lobby of the Hotel.
The term, in fact, well predates Grant and the Willard Hotel and most probably goes back to 17th century England and refers to the lobbies where constituents and petitioners could meet Members of Parliament.
Yet somehow the image of rail tycoons and land speculators in the lobby of the Willard smoking big cigars while stuffing cash into the pockets of pliable politicians seems to have stuck
This is a great pity as lobbying is an entirely legitimate and democratic activity. It is even protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution which speaks of the right “…to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Substitute the words “advocacy” or “campaigning” for “lobbying” and you get a better sense of what it should be about: making the best case you can to the powers that be.
When it descends to kick backs and payola it is no longer lobbying, it is just corruption, plain and simple.
Yet this is the image that still persists: guys in the lobby of the Willard improperly influencing politicians, and their more modern day equivalents.
But it is a false image. Lobbyists today come in all shapes, sizes and types.
People can be advocates on their own behalf, or they can seek the services of others with experience and skills in presenting a case on behalf of others.
They can be from schools, universities, communities, companies, trade associations, trade unions, churches, charities, environmental groups or senior citizens groups
Not all lobbyists are paid. In my experience (from both sides of the divide) most are not. During my time in government I recall getting more calls and emails from volunteer lobbyists than paid ones.
Lobbying is not simply about getting access to a TD, Senator Councillor or Official. These meetings are just the final small step in a much more complex process.
Lobbying is about preparation. It is about research. It is about assembling the facts and honestly analyzing the implications of what you propose. It is a process – and one more about research, education and communication than it is just about persuasion.
I know, from being on the other side, that a dedicated individual pleading a case that they know and understand deeply can be infinity more persuasive than the most costly lawyer or public affairs consultant.
This was the case with those who campaigned for formal recognition of the bravery of those who fought at Jadotville in the Congo in 1961. Not only were they tireless and passionate, they had done their research. No one knew or understood the complexities of this tragic situation better than they. When presented, their case was undeniable.
Far from having something to fear from lobbying such as this, democracy needs it. Just as lobbyists and public affairs people will benefit from a transparent and fair system of regulation.
As Justice Brandeis observed, almost a century ago. “sunlight is the best of disinfectants”.
Here is my Broadsheet column from June 7th 2016. Published online here: http://www.broadsheet.ie/riding-a-zeitgeist 
derekmooney.ie 