The life of Brian

COMMENT

It looks like Fianna Fáil are going to be stuck with Brian Cowen until the general election whether they like it or not. Looks like the country is going to be stuck with him as Taoiseach until the election, whether the people of the country like it or not.
This weekend, starting on Friday, may change the situation with a number of opinion polls quite likely to show a further decline in support for Fianna Fáil and for Brian Cowen himself.
This Friday’s MRBI poll in The Irish Times might actually show an improvement in support for Fianna Fail compared with the last MRBI poll. But if it does, it most likely will be a false improvement as the methodology is being changed. It cannot really be compared with the last poll.
Anybody who knows Brian Cowen, no matter what party they belong to, knows he is decent, he is hard-working and is a man of great intellect. But if you listened to callers to various radio programmes during the course of last week, you would be forgiven if you thought he is a lazy, drunken moron who cannot get out of bed until after midday.
Nothing could be further from the truth and I write here with personal experience of the man going back nearly 30 years.
Of course he should not have been up until nearly 4am the morning he was going on live radio. He should not have been drinking pints of beer or whatever. He should not have been singing or doing any of his entertaining party pieces. He should have said his prayers and gone to bed at 11pm.
That’s not our Taoiseach. He likes to let the hair down now and then and enjoy himself. Don’t try to tell me that such behaviour is all right for an ordinary citizen but not for a Taoiseach. I prefer to see Brian Cowen being himself rather than pretending to be somebody he is not and never could be.
Yes, his Morning Ireland interview with Cathal MacCoille was terrible. You couldn’t tell what he was saying. I didn’t think it was much worse than any other interview I have heard with Brian Cowen. He didn’t have to be drunk or suffering from a bad hangover to give such a bad interview. He just doesn’t do good interviews. Neither did Bertie Ahern. Nor Garret Fitzgerald if it comes to that And nobody could ever accuse Garret the Good of ever being drunk or disorderly.
Just because it is Brian Cowen, people want to believe the worst about him. Give a dog a bad name. Nothing Brian Cowen will do will please. The fact that he was recently rated by the prestigious Newsweek magazine as one of the top 10 political leaders in the world counts for nothing. Neither does praise for his handling of the economic crisis hold any sway here despite the fact that that praise was handed out by no lesser publications than The Economist and The Wall Street Journal.
Politics, as we all know, is all about style, never mind the substance, and Brian Cowen doesn’t do style.
I heard his opponents saying during the week that they wanted Brian Cowen give a morale-boosting interview. They said they wanted him to be upbeat and give an optimistic message to the thousands on the dole queues who have no prospect of any kind of a job in the foreseeable future.
If he were to do that they would accuse him of telling lies. I know they would. Oppositions think they must always oppose even when they are contradicting themselves. Brian Cowen just cannot win.
His major problem is that he does not inspire confidence. I fear that time has run out on him. I fear that he is never now going to inspire confidence no matter what he does. He is always going to be suspect. But it is vital at this time of economic crisis to have a leader who can inspire confidence not only at home but more importantly abroad. We need a leader who can convince the world that we are capable of managing our public finances in such a way that we are going to be able to repay our debts.
Do we have such a leader even in waiting? I would say Brian Lenihan is the man, but for the ongoing questions about the state of his health. I do not believe there is anybody else among the potential leaders in Fianna Fáil who might be able to convince the international markets that he or she is capable of leading this country out of the present crisis. Even if there were, his or her position would be undermined by an Opposition who are more concerned about getting Fianna Fáil out of government than they are in solving our financial or economic problems.
Leading, of course, to more uncertainty in the markets. More than even before I am convinced that the only way we can get out of this mess without calling on the International Monetary Fund, is by having a national government of some sort.
We need to show that all parties are united in taking the tough measures we need to take over the next few years. A general election would not make matters any better; it would probably make matters worse.
But I do not see any prospect of the parties getting together in the national interest.
In the meantime, it looks as if we are going to have Brian Cowen to kick around for a while yet. Let’s make the best of it.