Is the man who would start a row in an empty room on the way back?

WHAT word best describes Michael McDowell during his political career – arrogant, intolerant, self-serving, brilliant, courageous, or exciting? They all applied to him at different times. Whether one liked him or loathed him, he left his mark on Irish politics.

Charlie Haughey was the great survivor, but Haughey never lost his seat in the Dáil. McDowell failed to retain his seat three different times. He was first elected to the Dáil in 1987 only to lose the seat two years later. He regained it in 1992, but lost it again in 1997, won it back in 2002 and lost it again in 2007.

After his last defeat, he clearly felt his political career was over. His departure was reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s loss in the race for governor of California in 1962 after he had already lost the presidency to John F Kennedy in 1960.

“Just think what you’re going to be missing,” Nixon told the press after the California defeat. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. This is my last press conference.”

Of course, it wasn’t. Six years later he was elected to the White House. McDowell has demonstrated similar political resilience with two successful comebacks already.

In the wake of Lucinda Creighton’s embarrassing remarks this week about Fine Gael’s fundraising techniques, there have been suggestions the party might run a second or a third candidate with her at the next general election. Of course, that is McDowell’s old constituency.

Fine Gael, in a sense, has always been his spiritual home. In the 1970s he was an active member of the party but grew disillusioned with Garret FitzGerald and joined the Progressive Democrats at its inception.

The PDs were formed to keep Charlie Haughey out of power, but the first chance they got they formed a coalition with him as Taoiseach in 1989. McDowell was outside the Dáil at the time, but he was elected party chairman and exerted enormous political influence, much to the annoyance of many people, especially Albert Reynolds, who dubbed that coalition as “a temporary little arrangement”.

Members on all sides of the Dáil resented the outside influence of McDowell who was probably the most accomplished head-hunter in the history of Leinster House. He played a major role in securing the dismissal of Brian Lenihan, senior, as Tánaiste and Minister for Defence during the presidential election of 1990, and he was also prominent in securing the withdrawal of the nomination of James McDaid as Lenihan’s successor as Minister for Defence. Soon afterwards he came to Mary Robinson’s rescue at the 11th hour in the presidential election by savaging Pádraig Flynn following his snide personal attack on her. Lenihan had been making a strong comeback in his campaign until McDowell rescued the Robinson campaign with his forensic dismantling of the voluble Flynn.

Although McDowell was still outside the Dáil, he played a significant part in the ouster of Charlie Haughey as Taoiseach in 1992, and also helped to bring down the government of Albert Reynolds later the same year. The PDs became the first minor party in a coalition to bring down a government and actually gain seats in the resulting general election.

Following his return to the Dáil, McDowell savaged the Taoiseach over £1.1 million invested in his C&D Foods by the Arab Rashid Al Masri, who had recently obtained Irish passports for himself and his family.

“Lest I be misunderstood, I am referring to the Taoiseach,” McDowell told the Dáil. “His family firm was enriched by £1.1m in exchange for citizenship.”

McDowell depicted this country as a “kind of squalid little banana republic with a Papa Doc Duvalier regime.”

When Tánaiste Dick Spring told the Dáil he had examined the files on the Masri affair and found them in order, McDowell accused him of being “morally brain dead.” He raised the political temperature so much that Spring and Reynolds were soon at each other’s throats, and that government came tumbling down.

McDowell lost his seat again in 1997 but he was too influential to ignore. He was appointed Attorney General in 1999 and helped to block the reappointment of Pádraig Flynn as European commissioner.

In the general election of 2002, McDowell rescued the PDs by skilfully arguing that Fianna Fáil should not be trusted with an overall majority. This seemed to strike the right note with the electorate because the PDs doubled their seats. For the first time in our history a coalition government was actually re-elected.

McDowell became Minister for Justice and at times behaved like a political bootboy. He absurdly compared Richard Bruton to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. McDowell was the politician people loved to hate. He came across as arrogant, insufferable, intemperate and intolerant of views other than his own, but he was never dull. He could start an argument in an empty room.

He had squabbles with the gardaí, prison officers, judiciary, legal colleagues and the opposition, as well as with his partners in government, and even within his own party. He essentially pushed Mary Harney aside to gain the leadership of the PDs in 2006, and he replaced her as Tánaiste.

In the process he left many hostages to fortune. As Minister for Justice in 2004 he suggested that gangland activity around Dublin was being wound up and that recent killings were just “the sting of a dying wasp.” But those remarks came back to haunt him when there was a record number of gangland killings in 2006.

HAVING denounced Tánaiste Dick Spring as “morally brain dead” over his support of Albert Reynolds during the Masri affair in 1994, McDowell seemed strangely quiet as Tánaiste himself in comparatively similar circumstances when it was disclosed that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern had received “dig outs” from various people in the 1990s.

The PDs liked to present themselves as the party of financial probity, but they supported Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen as they squandered the greatest boom in the country’s history. In time that government may well be seen as our worst ever.

Although McDowell toyed with the idea of pulling out of government with Fianna Fáil during the 2007 campaign, his PD colleagues blocked him because they were anxious for Fianna Fáil transfers. But the PDs were virtually eradicated.

Nevertheless, McDowell probably did more to undermine Sinn Féin in the 2007 general election than anybody with his momentous TV confrontation with Gerry Adams. He ridiculed the Sinn Féin contention that its members only took the average industrial wage and donated the remainder of their earnings to the party.

When challenged about his holiday home in Donegal, Adams responded that it was owned by the bank.

“Which bank is that, the Northern Bank?” McDowell pointedly asked. It was seen as an insinuation linking Sinn Féin with the £26.5m robbery of the Northern Bank in 2004.

Rather than the predicted gains, Sinn Féin actually lost a seat in 2007. This setback was largely attributed to McDowell’s devastating performance in the debate with Adams. Sinn Féin supporters were therefore ecstatic when McDowell lost his own seat. Are we going to see McDowell make a third comeback? If we do, it will be a fourth coming.