Could the real Brian Cowen stand up please

I believe that the real Brian Cowen is a man I used to know fairly well back in the ’80s and ’90s of the last century. That man was a fighter who would not take guff from anybody, no matter who they were or how powerful they were.

He was a young backbench Fianna Fáil TD when he took on the might of the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey and told him to his face that it was time for him to go. His only fault then was his intolerance for those who thought they knew it all but in reality knew nothing.
That old Brian Cowen was afraid of nothing and he won the respect of his parliamentary colleagues to such an extent that when he made his own bid for leadership over two years ago, there was nobody to oppose him.
However, since he was unanimously elected leader of Fianna Fáil in the spring of 2008, we saw very little of that Brian Cowen.
I cannot explain what happened to the real Brian Cowen. It was as if he was blinded like a rabbit by the headlights of high office. Instead of the leader many of us expected to see, all we got was a person who seemed to suffer from shell-shock as this country lurched from one economic crisis to another.
I do not know if any leader could have been capable of leading us out of the mess we got ourselves into. But the mistakes made by Brian Cowen and his government seemed to make matters worse. Instead of leading us out of the crisis, everything he did brought us deeper into it.
Things appear to be far worse today than they were two years ago when we first realised we were up the creek.
Of course, it is easy to see in hindsight what mistakes were made. But the buck stops at the Taoiseach’s desk, the mistakes were made on his watch and so he has to take the lion’s share of the blame.
I find it hard to credit that the Brian Cowen I used to know would surrender so easily to the banks and to the bully boys of Europe and the IMF. I believe the real Brian Cowen would not have given a blanket guarantee to the banks two years ago or have accepted the punitive interest rates imposed on us by Europe and the IMF two weeks ago.
The real Brian Cowen would have shown that he is the man in charge.
He would have addressed the nation on television two years ago and told us what the position was and what we needed to do to get on the road to recovery.
He would have given us regular updates on the state of progress – or otherwise – and he would have kept nothing from us. If, in spite of all his efforts, we still needed to call in the IMF, I believe he would have told us so in advance, rather than pretending there would be no need for outside help. He would have pointed out that this Republic was still a sovereign state and going to the IMF did not mean we were giving up our nationhood no more than Britain did when that country had to call in the IMF for aid some 30 or 40 years ago. We would have believed him.
He would have won our confidence and he would have convinced the international money lenders that we were borrowing for the future from a position of strength rather than from one of weakness.
But the Brian Cowen we got kept us in the dark. He made the poorest and the most vulnerable among us pay for all the mistakes and all the greed that brought us to where we are today.
I do not believe that is the real Brian Cowen but for all intents and purposes he might as well be. Because he is the person in position. It is this imposter who surrendered to the banks and to the big boys in Germany and in the IMF. It is this unreal Brian Cowen who oversaw last week’s cruel and harsh budget.
We got a glimpse of the real Brian Cowen in the Dáil in recent days and in recent interviews on radio and on television. We saw the Brian Cowen I used to know, the fighter with his back to the wall who would never say die, who would never take guff from anybody.
But it is too late now. He may save a few seats for Fianna Fáil here and there that might otherwise be lost. The election will be held within three months and anything Brian Cowen says or does from now on will make little difference.
He may have bought some time for himself but the die is cast by now. Fianna Fáil are faced with the heaviest defeat the party has ever had to endure.
His own popularity is at such record low levels that out of 100 voters only eight say they would support him.
Perhaps he has been extremely unlucky. His term of office coincided with the deepest global recession in living memory. Some blame him for that – as if he had everything to do with the collapse of sub-prime lending in the USA.
Perhaps he would have been a very good Taoiseach if the boom times had continued. We will never know now.
His days are numbered. I am sorry because I know that the real Brian Cowen would have handled the crisis far better than the weak Taoiseach we got. It is one of the great tragedies of our time. I am sorry for Ireland, for Fianna Fáil and for Brian Cowen.
It is a great pity that the real Brian Cowen did not stand up sooner.