I want government by the people, not an economist who knows best

THIS George Lee phenomenon is dangerous. I don’t mean the man himself, of course.

Eamon Dunphy said on radio the other day that he (Lee, that is) had managed his departure from RTÉ very badly, but that he was clearly a man of ability and character.

I agree with that assessment. George Lee has the talent and ability to become an addition to the body politic and an asset in terms of a wider and deeper political discourse about where we are and where we’re going. The way he left RTÉ, although it was tacky, is a storm in a teacup.

Not that he’s perfect. He took part in a “webchat” on the RTÉ website some time ago (he probably didn’t have party membership on his mind then). When he was asked what major structural changes he thought had benefited the Irish economy in the past 10 years, his answer was “… In my view, they all centre around making the country safe and attractive for capital and capitalists”.

Mind you, he was much more to my way of thinking when answering a question about keeping economics straightforward and understandable. “Ignore the economists,” he said. “They never agree with each other, never mind a report, and speak with words you would need a dictionary to understand. Sometimes they make commonsense seem very complicated, so I just try to concentrate on ordinary people and the way they see the world.”

I couldn’t disagree with any of that.

So, there’s nothing dangerous about George Lee the man. It’s the phenomenon I have a problem with. And there are two reasons why the phenomenon is dangerous, ever corrosive.

Ever since Lee was nominated to run for Fine Gael, I have been listening to pundits and commentators, and even some wistful former politicians, arguing this is exactly what we need – real brains in politics at last. Expertise, experience at running a business, management skills, professionals. Why haven’t we got some of them in our politics, in both opposition and government?

How can we possibly run a country without dozens of people of George Lee’s calibre, instead of the dimwits and time-servers who populate our politics now? We need reform, list systems, a thorough shake-up, if we’re to attract the right sort of person into politics.

It’s all nonsense, and it’s dangerous nonsense at that. The worst thing that could happen to George Lee would be that he might start to believe it himself (and to judge from some of his utterances, he’s running that risk already). He’s good at his job. But that doesn’t make him special. And even if it did, being special isn’t enough.

Nobody has ever bettered AbrahamLincoln’s definition of democracy, the 10 words almost at the very end of the Gettysburg address: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In Lincoln’s understanding, it was to that principle that the men who died at Gettysburg gave “the last full measure of devotion”. Lincoln fought a civil war for the principle and was prepared to die for it. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Not government of the people, by the experts, for the economy. There is one qualification for government in a democracy, and one qualification for politics – that you earn and hold the trust of the people. You don’t have to be an expert, or a genius, or a professional. You have to deserve the trust of the people who elect you.

You might deserve that trust because of your intellect or your honesty, or your brilliant track record in the past. You might deserve it because people know you to be a hard worker who will try your best never to let them down.

You might deserve it because people look at you and see some aspect of themselves. But I’ve never heard of anyone deserving the trust of the people because they got a college degree or made a mint in business.

The day we decide you have to be an expert to serve in government is the day we begin to wave goodbye to democracy. And it’s also the day we’ll make a very foolish mistake.

If you don’t believe me (and I’m not trying to personalise this) give me a list of the doctors who have been great ministers for health, the teachers who have been outstanding ministers for education, the businessmen who have been great ministers for finance.

For that matter, you might like to list the economists or accountants who have been great ministers for finance. Not just here, but you could try Britain as well – and you won’t come up with a long list in any of those categories.

There’s a reason for that – and it brings me to the second danger I see in the buzz around George Lee. We know he’s a good analyst, a good television communicator, a well-qualified professional. Is he a leader? What do we know about him that makes us think he has leadership skills?

As it happens, I know Alex White, one of George Lee’s opponents in Dublin South, and I’d be happy to testify he has abundant leadership potential. And I know I’m biased because he’s standing for the Labour party. He’s a good communicator like George Lee is; he’s a qualified professional (lawyer) and he has a background in RTÉ where, many years ago, he used to be one of Gay Byrne’s radio producers. In my experience of him, he has an outstanding sense of the common good and the courage to defend it.

Leadership in a democracy involves the ability to project a sense of vision. But it also requires the capacity to listen, to take account of people’s fears and anxieties, to bring people along. It involves the need to make careful, and not always popular, choices and to be willing to defend those choices.

IT’S possible to build a leader out of someone who makes mistakes and is willing to learn from them, but it’s actually very difficult to see leadership in someone who starts from the position of always knowing best.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve argued here many times that our political system is in urgent need of reform. I believe it’s broken to the extent that we live in a time of great danger to our democracy – and we’ll never miss it till it’s gone.

But it’s the structures and the systems that are broken and that need fundamental change. You can’t fix them by setting out to try to import people into politics on the basis of some spurious job description or set of qualifications.

Going down that road would be a recipe for an out-of-touch, elitist form of politics that all too often would be incapable of remembering where the common good lies.

So I wish George Lee well in a personal sense. He described himself the other day as being on a learning curve, and I must say I admire that.

But I’m not ready to be governed by an economist who knows best. I’m part of the people and I want to be governed by the people, for the people.