Cullen’s flaws can be just glorious

MARTIN CULLEN is a flawed politician. He’s not alone in that. Many of his ministerial colleagues are too. But most of them are cute enough to recognise their flaws and their limits and hide them.

The handy old bit of put-downery that’s used against Cullen is that he’s arrogant. But that sobriquet isn’t entirely accurate. Arrogance suggests a sense of intellectual superiority, bordering on contempt. Cullen has never pretended to be that.

No, Cullen’s flaw is of a different order. It’s that he has a mule-ass stubborn streak. Cursed with a faulty political barometer, he has no sense of the storms approaching. Even when the facts are stacked impossibly against him, he has kept on waffling, arguing, admitting to no wrong.