This political demise will take some beating

ALL political careers end in failure, according to the cliché, but even so, Brian Cowen’s gradual but now certain demise will take some beating.

Just as the economy went from boom to bust, so too did Mr Cowen — from the aggressive, capable politician who was widely credited with rescuing Fianna Fáil in the 2007 general election, to the man under whose watch the country slid into an international bailout.

His party is on the brink of electoral catastrophe as a result, and the snap judgment on Mr Cowen will be that he was the worst Taoiseach in recent history and the worst leader of Fianna Fáil too.

Often with political leaders, the passing of time helps to render the snap judgment into a more balanced picture, weighing up both the achievements as well as the failures of his or her time in charge.

But the bailout would seem to make it well-near impossible that Mr Cowen’s reputation will ever recover — even if he does manage to get the December budget through as a first tentative step towards recovery.

It was supposed to be so different.

When Bertie Ahern finally announced in April 2008 that he was departing, there was a massive sigh of relief within both the Government and Fianna Fáil.

Mr Ahern’s “man of the people” image had been destroyed by the revelations about dig-outs at the Mahon Tribunal. He was no longer an electoral asset but a liability. Fianna Fáil looked to his deputy, Mr Cowen, and saw a tough, tribal, intellectually capable and, crucially, fundamentally honest politician.

He had, it seemed at that point (hindsight is a wonderful thing), been a success in his four years as finance minister. He had previously been in foreign affairs and played his part in the Northern Ireland peace process. Before that, there had been a range of other ministerial portfolios which he had handled competently with no obvious debacles staining his scorecard.

He was a clean break from the Bertie Ahern era even though, paradoxically, he had been Mr Ahern’s chief lieutenant through much of that era. He was the future, who would lead Fianna Fáil to greater heights.

But things went wrong almost from the beginning. When he became Taoiseach in May 2008, the Lisbon Treaty referendum was just weeks away. The campaign was a disaster, and the treaty was soundly defeated.

But even though that placed his administration in the doghouse with their EU partners, Lisbon turned out to be the least of Mr Cowen’s problems.

The public finances were already deteriorating — partly, though not exclusively, because of some of the policies he had adopted as finance minister. And in July 2008, he and his chosen successor in finance, Brian Lenihan, announced their first round of spending cuts.

Then came the emergency move on September 30 that year to guarantee the banks, and that fateful decision — though few realised it then — effectively sealed Mr Cowen’s fate. The banking problem, as Mr Lenihan recently admitted, simply became too big for Ireland to handle.

It wasn’t for the want of trying, though: the Government announced ever-increasing amounts of new capital for the banks, and then launched state agency NAMA to take toxic development loans off their books, but nothing seemed to work.

And as the banking problem spiralled out of control, so too did the wider economy. The property sector had already crashed, and now unemployment soared, tax revenues collapsed and the Government was left facing a massive hole in the public finances.

The twin problems — banks and public finances — necessitated the arrival of the EU, the ECB and IMF. They are effectively in control now, as much as the current Government or its eventual successor will seek to deny it.

And what of Mr Cowen? What will there be left to look back to once the curtain falls on his premiership? The achievements under his watch will seem pretty hollow when compared against the fact he presided over the worst economic disaster in the state’s history.

Those who know Mr Cowen would argue that, in battling vainly to address both the fiscal and banking crises, he at all times put the country first — doing the best thing as he saw it, even when the public or his party disagreed.

Those loyal to him will say he is doing the same thing now, acting in the national interest in trying to get the budget across the line.

But the actions he has taken up to now ultimately have not worked. And it has cost him and the country hugely.