Monday, October 26, 2009
ABOUT 10 days ago, a rumour started about the EU Commissionership.
The first I heard about it was when I received a text asking me a question.
"Will MGQ get it?"
"Get what?" I thought. But when a texter assumes that you’re in the know, you don’t want to look like an ignorant, excluded, uncool slob, so I boxed clever. (Well, I tried to box clever.) "What do YOU think?" I texted back.
"Don’t be mean," was the answer.
Clearly, my interrogator thought I knew whether Máire Geoghegan-Quinn would or wouldn’t do it, whatever (to echo Bill Clinton) "it" was, and wasn’t letting him in on the secret. I decided the truth would set me free.
"What the hell are we talking about?" I asked.
"You know bloody well," came the response.
"I genuinely don’t," I replied.
"That means she WILL do it," he replied. "Great. Appreciate the steer. Don’t worry. I won’t reveal my source. TTFN."
I didn’t know what TTFN was, either (I later found out it was ta-ta for now). All I knew at that point was that I had, without knowledge, evidence or intent, confirmed a rumour to a third party who had ended communication with me and moved into spreading the news I had confirmed. Which, of course, I hadn’t. Because you can’t confirm something about which you are pig ignorant.
So what did I do? Like all good journalists, I went to the source. I texted the Irish Member of the European Court of Auditors. "Are you going to get it?" I asked Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.
Back bounced an answer with such flattering speed, my self-esteem picked up a bit. Until I read it.
"Not you, too," it said.
"Not me too as well as who?"
"Irish media."
Down went the self-esteem again. Everybody else had got to her first. I was so behind on this rumour, (the meat of which I still hadn’t managed to stick a fork in) it was mortifying.
Fortunately, it was at this point that the text and email damburst broke, with media and political people sharing whatever they knew. Or, in most cases, like me, didn’t know.
I was able to work out that MGQ was a hot tip for the EU Commissionership when a replacement for Charlie Mc Creevy is required. The Taoiseach couldn’t give it to any sitting minister because it would screw with his Leinster House numbers, one texter suggested. He could give it to John Bruton, another proposed. Naah, came the response. Why would he? Somebody sniffily remarked that one good reason was that Bruton was a Big Brain who’d be able for the job. So is Pat Cox, a texter riposted. And the Government might want to show gratitude for all he did to get Lisbon 2 passed. Nobody picked up on this, partly, I suspect, because everybody knows gratitude has damn all to do with political appointments.
Early the following day, a blog stated with absolute certainty that Máire Geoghegan-Quinn was getting the Commissionership and Dan Boyle was getting her job. The fact that neither seemed to know about their good fortune was beside the point. MGQ had moved into the straight. Or is it the strait? One way or the other, she was in it, and the rumours, within days, made it into mainstream media, spurred by the belief that the Taoiseach was coming under pressure to appoint the first woman from Ireland to the post.
Brian Cowen isn’t amenable to that kind of pressure, which is just as well, because if MGQ were offered the job as a gender make-weight, she’d undoubtedly reject it. When she was first offered a cabinet post, the gender issue was mentioned by then taoiseach Charlie Haughey, but in historic terms only: she’d be the first female cabinet minister since Countess Marciewitz. She herself has never been much for public feminism, and the women’s movement has tended to look at her askance, suspecting that, whether in the cabinet, on state boards or in the Court of Auditors, she likes being the exceptional female achiever. Of course she does. Any woman in her kind of situation knows the dynamic is easier to manage when you’re the minority woman in a group dominated by men. (Particularly if you’re clever enough to know what you don’t know and identify a team of experts to fill the deficit – which is what MGQ has always done.) Being the one woman at the cabinet table was not a disadvantage, back in 1993, when the mothers of two gay men persuaded her that the law on homosexuality should be changed. The gay community at the time had no faith that a Fianna Fáil Minister for Justice would or could decriminalise homosexuality. She managed it, driven by empathy with those mothers.
Motherhood has been central to hercareer. When one of her two sons was born, she was a minister of state, reporting to senior minister Des O’Malley. They were not friends. Yet O’Malley, learning that she was determined to breastfeed her baby, found a private room near the chamber to facilitate her. She didn’t make a public issue out of it, because she didn’t figure that being the son or husband of a politician should make public property out of you. Years later, she got out of politics for that same reason, creating a new identity for herself as a columnist, TV/radio presenter and novelist before Bertie Ahern appointed her to the Court of Auditors.
Ahern, like O’Malley, was not a friend. He owed her nothing. Either his gesture was the most generous act of his career or he thought she was a better prospect than any of the other contenders. If that was what he believed, she proved him right, becoming anonymously effective out in Luxembourg.
The fact that neither Ahern nor O’Malley were friends fits a pattern. MGQ has a lot of acquaintances but – for a politician – a relatively small group of friends, bound to her with hoops of steel down the years. Some are women with whom she went to school or to Carysfort. Some are politicians. Many are public and civil servants. A fair few are the staffs who worked with her in various government departments. They’re the people she stays in contact with, no matter where in the world she is. The odd contradiction is that, when it comes to friends, she does all the things her critics said she was no good at in politics: she remembers the birthdays, telephones to find the results of the hospital tests, writes the letters of sympathy.
When she neither trusts nor likes someone, she doesn’t bother to pretend otherwise. That, combined with a ready wit and a proclivity for practical jokes with the potential to humiliate the target individual, divides the reactions to MGQ neatly down the middle: you like, trust and admire her. Or you can’t stick her. You’d love to see a clever courageous woman in the Commissionership. Or it would drive you cuckoo bananas to see her getting the ticket to Brussels.
One way or the other, if you hear anything, let me know. I need to get on top of this rumour.
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