Tag: elections

Gallagher has no one to blame but himself

by dsmooney, posted in Politics

Aras an UachtáranBelow is my critique of the Sean Gallagher’s unsuccessful campaign for the Áras. This appears in today’s EVENING HERALD (Friday Oct 28th) though my column is not online there, just yet.  

Already they are calling it the Gallagher moment. What they mean is that instant on the Frontline debate when the momentum that had driven Gallagher’s campaign for the previous ten days evaporated under Sinn Féin fire.

The reality may be a little less dramatic. While Sean Gallagher’s campaign did come to a halt on Frontline, it took the next 48 hours for it to go into a full nose dive.

On the face of it the McGuinness assault was intended as a signal to Sinn Féin voters not to transfer to Gallagher. The polls were showing Sean with a convincing lead over Higgins in the region of 10%, but still needed McGuinness transfers to see him over the line.

The Shinner’s strategists were determined that they would not be the ones to give Sean the keys to the Áras and by extension hand a vicarious victory to Fianna Fáil, even by proxy.

Their intent was clear, make it as difficult as possible for Gallagher in the final days. It was why they stored up the the story for a few days. Conversely that is what made the situation even more damaging for Gallagher. He clearly knew the story was out there, although in different guises and varying versions, but when confronted with it he seemed dazed and confused.

The real damage came the following day when Gallagher still seemed unable to deal with the allegation. His campaign produced a punchy and clear press release, but the candidate seemed either unable or unwilling to deliver it.

Perhaps his problem was that after months of uttering bland and cosy messages about positivity and unity (not to mention entrepreneurship) he just could not find the steel in his soul needed to take on his challengers and tell them to go take a running jump at themselves.

Yes, Sinn Féin and McGuinness were changing their story. Events that were claimed to have happened after the dinner were now being said to have happened before it. Their story was all over the place. But it appeared that Gallagher’s was too, if you were just to go by what he himself said in the interviews he did on Pat Kenny and the Six One news.

So what if he had been involved in a fund raising dinner back in 2008. The event was not a clandestine one. The donations were declared. The money was going for legitimate political expenditure. He had been the campaign manager for a successful Dáil candidate in 2007. He had a onus to help defray the costs and expenses of that election. I was in a similar position elsewhere. There were bills to be paid, so money needed to be raised by volunteers and others. No banks were robbed, no one got shot.

So confused and oblique were his replies that the problem festered and grew all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Many including myself thought the damage might be limited to his capacity to attract transfers. It now looks like it went far wider than deeper, possibly due to it all been linked to question marks over his company accounts and large fees taken by himself.

The two weeks of labelling him a Fianna Fáiler did not, as evidenced in successive polls, do him any damage. The flaws and errors in his own handling of a relatively minor crisis did. The Presidency is about judgement, his was called seriously into question.

In the case of Gay Mitchell the judgement that must be called into question is that of the senior party figures who allowed him to go forward as a candidate. Gay is and remains a deeply committed public representative and Fine Gaeler, yet it has looked for the past month that the party on the ground had abandoned him. His campaign was unfocussed and patchy from the start, not helped by whispers that he was not really Enda’s first choice as a candidate. Well, if he wasn’t then why run him? Is Enda the leader or not?

Gay can take some comfort that his own poor showing was reflected in the Dublin West by-election where the party’s candidate also faired badly. The question how is how do we reconcile opinion polls that consistently show Fine Gael in the mid 30s with these results?

There will be some pretty interesting analysis to be done when the smoke and dust settles after this weekend,.

And they say that negative campaigns don’t work…..

by dsmooney, posted in Aras11, Fine Gael, Government, Irish Labour Party, Politics, Sinn Féin

The presidential campaign is barely a week old and already we have candidates producing P60s showing how much they have earned over the years. This was in response to dark propaganda about earnings and directorships.

And they say that negative campaigns don’t work. If we are at this stage just one week into the race then it cannot be long until the demands come that this candidate or that one produces their birth, baptismal or parents’ marriage certs.

We should not really be that surprised. Academic/college politics is said to be so much more vicious than real politics because the stakes are so low. It could just as easily be said about Irish Presidential elections.

It is not that the office is unimportant; it is that the powers are limited and the office appears to fade into the background once the campaign is over.

The fact that Mary McAleese has been an excellent President somehow adds to the notion that it doesn’t matter an awful lot as to who succeeds her.

As none of the candidates have so far convinced us that they are cut from the same cloth as her, the debate is slowly turning to which of them will be the least worst.

The office of President is so tightly defined and closely managed that almost no occupant could manage to go truly rogue. So, while many people, myself included, have severe misgivings about the possibility of McGuinness occupying the office, the truth is that his being President would not change anything. Martin McGuinness being President will not make a significant difference to anyone’s daily life – apart from his own.

The reality of the past decade is that Sinn Féin has been moving steadily to the centre in the North. No sooner do they move into office but they very quickly adopt the policies and strategies of those who were there before them. Sinn Féin in Government in the North is not a thorn in anyone’s side, least of all the DUP’s. They may head up anti hospital closure committees in the 26 counties, but in the North they merrily implement the cuts imposed byLondon.

So, while his election may not herald the end of civilisation as we know it, it could send out a very embarrassing signal at this crucial time.

Almost any of the other candidates: Michael D Higgins, Mary Davis, Sean Gallagher or Gay Mitchell could each fulfil the role in their own individual ways without causing us any embarrassment or sparking an international crisis.

This least-worst approach appeared to be the underlying theme to last night’s TV3 debate.  Unlike past encounters, there was some spark to it. The cross talk between the candidates did not yield much and at times became insufferably twee. The competition to be the most concerned by the trauma of suicide bordered on distasteful.

It was the questioning and serial grilling by the moderator that managed to reveal something more about each of the candidates. As someone said on Twitter last night, it was not that any one candidate emerged as the winner: it was more that some managed to emerge less damaged and scarred.

David Norris and Dana were not among them. Though a veteran of past campaigns, Dana seemed the least prepared and most unfocused. While Norris’s continuing obfuscation in the face of very specific questions from Browne on who it was inIsraelwho had advised him not to publish the remaining letters was telling.

David’s protestations that the public will decide this issue ring particularly hollow when he refuses to give them access to the full facts by releasing the outstanding letters. This issue is not going away and the longer it continues the worse he will get for him.

His media adviser is a big admirer of Tony Blair’s spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, He should remind his client of Campbell’s famous rule that if you allowed a bad news story to dominate the headlines for more than four days, you are in trouble.

David has had more than four days of such headlines and the only end in sight is his own. And, to think, we still have three weeks more of this to go.

Why Fianna Fáil is right not to contest Aras11

by dsmooney, posted in Politics

The reality that Fianna Fail is no longer the huge force in Irish politics that it once was is gradually dawning on some.

Former big beasts in the forest are finding that they now do not strike the same sense of awe and fear they once did when the party commanded support levels of around 40%.

While watching the process of them coming to terms with this loss of influence and authority in public is neither edifying nor appealing – it is better it happens quickly.

The reality of the last election is that Fianna Fail no longer has a God given right to presume it can be in power. It has received what a colleague of mine in the North described as “the mother and father of a political punishment beating”.

It is a beating from which the party can recover, but that process will be long and arduous. The process of renewal the party must undergo must itself commence with the facing of some facts.

The first among these is that the traditional way of doing political business will no longer work. That means, in this instance, that the old assumption that almost any candidate Fianna Fail selects from its own ranks will automatically be a front runner no longer applies. Things have changed utterly for everyone in the party, not just those at the top.

It applies even to huge voter getters like Brian Crowley. For him to think that he could personally withstand this swing against the party is to miss what happened last February.

There is no great evidence to show that the public anger has diminished significantly. Any candidate facing the electorate in the foreseeable future, and that includes this October, with Fianna Fail on their posters will incur the wrath of a still smarting public – no matter how small they make the logo.

Contrary to the views of others, the party leadership was right, and is right, to wait until now to decide its strategy. The suggestion that this decision should – or could – have been made last June or July is nonsense. This is a decision that required some time and space for calm consideration. It is a decision that needed to be made when the full impact and scale of what happened last February had been digested.

Having the Gay Byrne flirtation in public before taking this decision was an error, though it hard to see how anyone could have thought the Byrne option could ever have been considered just in private.

It sent the wrong message to the party membership. Martin’s countrywide tour of the constituencies was reconnecting the leadership with the members – the Byrne episode has dented that reconnection: though not damaged it irreparably, despite the rantings of a few impetuous people on Facebook.

But consider what a hero Micheal Martin would have appeared if he had convinced Byrne to run. Consider too that some of those who were most critical of Martin for courting the popular light entertainer had – a few weeks earlier – been urging him to allow four or five of his Oireachtas colleagues to sign the nomination papers of another, equally well regarded entertainment figure; David Norris.

There is a world of difference between accepting your current situation and allowing it to curb your ambitions. The fact that Fianna Fail may not directly contest this October’s Presidential election does not undermine the party’s hopes to recover the public trust it has lost.

If anything, not running a traditional style candidate is part of the process of letting former supporters know that it is taking the hard message they sent last February to heart.

This is not merely a question of the party saving a few hundred thousand Euros by not running a candidate – it is about Fianna Fail doing what it traditionally did best: facing up to harsh realities and addressing them. It is this which offers Fianna Fáil a way to renewal and recovery, not the fielding of an Áras 2011 candidate.

It is way too early to call the Aras11 race

by dsmooney, posted in Aras11, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Irish Labour Party, Politics, Sinn Féin

My latest article on the aras11 race from the Evening Herald 13th August 2011

 

In about 75 days we will vote for our next President. It is a long way away and there will be plenty of polls to mull over between now and then.

The latest RedC Paddy Power poll does throw up some unexpected numbers, so I suspect with the next two or three polls. I would not expect them to settle down and reflect actual voter intentions until much closer to October 27th.

Uncle Gaybo tells us that he will make up his mind on whether to run or not. He has some big things to mull over, including his high level of potential support. They are impressive by any standards, almost Norrisian when compared to polls taken in recent weeks.

But what do these big numbers mean or matter when the beneficiary is not in or out of the race yet? Plus, he should consider that early leads come with a major health warning from Irish presidential election history.

The first major poll of the 1997 Aras race was conducted by IMS and published in the Sunday Independent about 40 days before polling (on September 21st)

It showed the Labour party’s candidate, Adi Roche in a commanding lead with 38% – ten points ahead of Uncle Gaybo’s figure today. On polling day, on October 30th she ended up on 7%.

If things changed that much for her in 40 days, consider how much more they might change over the course of 76 days. The words “sprint” and “marathon” come to mind. Come to think of it, so do the words “obstacle course”

As with Uncle Gaybo, Adi’s name had come into the fray as a bit of a surprise announcement just days before an opinion poll. The Irish Times poll; published ten days later, had Roche on 22%, behind McAleese (who polled 35% in both polls).

I know the dangers of comparing polls from different polling companies with different samples. I also know that Adi’s declining poll numbers followed a tough and difficult campaign.

The point I am making here is that any poll taken so far out from the actual polling day, particularly with some candidates yet to declare, is no indicator of how anyone might fair out on the big day. This applies to those at the top or the bottom of the poll. We may as well poll as to who will win the 2012 Eurovision inAzerbaijan(Though it’s a fair bet they’ll be East European)

To put it in its crudest terms, this poll seems to me to simply reflect how well the public recognises the candidates’ names, so far.

I say this as the truth is that the Presidential campaign not started yet. Yes, there has been a lot of coverage over the past few weeks, but this has focussed on particular individuals rather than the full slate.

Apart from a few short one to one interviews on the Pat Kenny radio show and his rather terrible Frontline debate where most of the potential candidates stayed away, there has been no opportunity to calmly judge the candidates suitability to be President.

The campaign proper in October will matter. By then we will know who is definitely in the race or who is not. We will start to hear clear messages from each of them why they are the right person to succeed President McAleese. We will hear about their values and their thoughts on what the next seven years should bring.

We, the public will be able to assess and review the candidates individually and collectively over that three to four weeks of intensive campaigning.

The last thing anyone wants or needs is an 11 week campaign. No one’s sanity, patience or tolerance could withstand 75 days of that.

So let us stay calm, wait to see who is in or out and all take a few deep breaths from now until late September when the race can begin in earnest.

Quick quips will not get you out of this mess, Senator. You need to hear some things you don’t want to hear

by dsmooney, posted in Politics
Presidential candidate
Senator David Norris

Text of my article on the Norris campaign saga from Evening Herald – see it online here:

I like West Wing quotes. They are not just well written, they can neatly sum up a situation. The one which comes to mind as I watch the evolving Norris campaign saga is from an episode in series one.

In it, the fictional President Bartlett character advises a colleague on selecting a campaign manager/ chief of staff. “Do you have a best friend… Is he smarter than you… Would you trust him with your life?”

When the guy answers “Yes sir” to all three questions, Bartlett tells him: “That’s your chief of staff.”

That’s precisely what David Norris has needed from the start of this whole thing.

Though I have criticised some of them, he has had many loyal and personally devoted campaigners. He has a huge social media support network too. But sheer enthusiasm is not enough. The one thing he has lacked most was someone who could challenge him and tell him the unpleasant facts he has not wanted to hear.

Many months ago I said that David’s gift for the quick quip and caustic comment may prove to be his Achilles heel as it suggested a lack of gravitas.

This proved only in part to be true. The tone, content and nature of his lengthy 1997 letter to his former partner’s lawyers was ill considered, ill advised and exposed poor judgement.

With due respect to the Senator’s continuing supporters, this assessment is really not in question. One in Four founder Colm O’Gorman put it more forthrightly on Twitter saying: “my views on his writing the letter are clear and unequivocal. He was wrong. Very wrong.”

Some, like Senator John Crown, attempt to explain away the letter pointing to ones written by Kathleen Lynch, Bobby Molloy and Trevor Sargent. Besides the “two wrongs don’t make a right” argument, in those cases the authors accepted their ill judgement and in the cases of Molloy and Sergent they resigned.

Yes, there are nasty people and vile groups who want to see Norris’s candidacy scuppered. Yes, there are those who would have employing dirty tricks to frustrate him.

But this isn’t a mafia movie. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.

The contemptibility of some of those who oppose David should not blind us to the legitimate questions this letter and saga raise about his candidacy. This is not a slanted leak from his detractors. The damage here comes from what the candidate has said himself and the material he has made available.

Running for the Presidency is not like a really big Trinity Senate campaign – and this campaign has not really started yet. We are still in the pre-campaign stage. The last two Presidential campaigns saw major negative campaigns. In 1990 the target was Brian Lenihan Sr, in 1997 it was Adi Roche and Mary McAleese. I fear we may have more to endure when this race hits its full stride in late September.

So where does that leave David’s campaign now?

David now says he wants to fight on, even though he recognises his chances slim. His courage and tenacity is admirable: but it is time to face realities. Alastair Campbell famously said that you have eleven days to kill a story or you’re toast. This is the second crisis for David, so he will have even less time.

I would suggest that one of two things may happen over the coming days to decide his future prospects.

The first is that some new Oireachtas members may rally to his cause. He already needed five more, the damage this crisis is inflicting on his campaign means he needs them today. If there are five more nominators out there: right now is the time to them to declare, not next September.

The second and more likely scenario is that some of those who have already declared for him will tell him, either privately or publicly, that they cannot now follow through on existing pledges of support. That will end his chances.

Whatever happens, this presidential race has changed completely. Past back markers may soon emerge as front runners… and there is still Dana to consider

Evening Herald August 1st August 2011