Smith may yet be on the receiving end of a Bertie ‘special’
Who else could elevate a constituency rival to stardom, irritate the Minister for Health, mortify the Minister for Foreign Affairs and infuriate the Taoiseach, all in one go?
It's fair to assume that he did not intend to make Maire Hocter a star. It was the Law of Unintended Consequences snapping into action that caught him by the short and curlies on that one.
Until last week, the majority of the plain people of Ireland had not registered the name Maire Hocter. She may be talented, principled and hardworking, but so was that guy who uttered all those great quotations and nobody remembers him. What was his name again? Right. Anon.
Anon was one hardworking dude, to judge by dictionaries of quotations. Not recognisable in the street, though, any more than Maire Hocter, who could have been Anon's lesser-known first cousin, until last week, when Michael Smith went into the colleague-promotion business.
Of course, some nasty types in media have been putting around the story that Michael set Maire up. They are saying he let her go first and express loyalty to Government policy, knowing he would then follow her and send a torpedo through the gizzard of said policy.
But, whatever he intended and whatever choreography was involved, the end result is clear: Michael Smith made Maire Hocter into a star.
The same nasty media types have been putting around the possibility that Dear Michael was a stalking horse saddled up by Brian Cowen. That he was out there testing the resolve of the Taoiseach for internal electoral purposes.
If the Taoiseach did nothing, it would fatally weaken his leadership and our Brian would present a nicely contrasting alternative.
If, on the other hand, the Taoiseach smacked Michael upside the head, it would do Michael&Son no end of good in their shared constituency. A clear win/win, all round. Except, of course, for Brian Cowen, who had nothing to do with it, but who was undoubtedly maddened by association with it.
Loyalty and leadership are the emotional imperatives of politics. Each looks simple and each is open to a million definitions. Smith, for example, was demonstrating profound loyalty to his local area in what he did last week, even if at the same time he demonstrated DISloyalty to constituency and Cabinet colleagues.
Some of his Cabinet colleagues may have been more overtly loyal to their leader, but their loyalty was equally varied and nuanced.
Some of them felt that since Bertie had been persuaded/forced at the last minute to include Smith in the Cabinet, Smith should have been more, not less loyal than those like themselves who had got in (as they saw it) on merit.
Some of them felt that having suffered silently when Smith sold off army barracks in their constituencies, they were entitled to expect the same silence from him when the Health Minister shrank a hospital in Smith's constituency.
Some of them saw both his backing off from a Cabinet decision and his anti-Hoctor 'stroke' as reeking of a stinky aspect of FF past that shouldn't be revived.
But what was most interesting was the logic that led so many to decide that Smith's disloyalty resulted from flawed leadership on Ahern's part. This theory holds that good leaders always breed loyal supporters. History proves otherwise. The leaders who breed the most loyal supporters are totalitarians.
When the Catholic Church had cradle-to-grave control of the lives of its members, when it had obligatory rites of passage, when its officers wore instantly identifiable uniforms and when it could and did publicly humiliate the less than totally obedient, it evoked a loyalty that was instinctive, reflex and potent.
The gentler, more inclusive leadership of the Church, post-Vatican II, evoked no such loyalty. Rather the reverse.
Yet, so hooked are we on the idea that disloyalty is the fault of the leader, rather than the led, that we create myths like the one repeatedly filmed about the Mutiny on the Bounty. This shows good seafaring lads forced into rebellion against their better judgement by a sadistic pig-faced Captain Bligh.
In truth, Bligh was a brilliant leader whose crews had a much higher survival rate than those of other ships captains, because he paid so much attention to shoving vitamin C into them in the form of limes, thus preventing the killer disease scurvy.
Even when he was dumped into a 23 foot boat in the middle of the Pacific with a few loyalists, his superlative leadership brought that open boat and its tiny crew to safety, across 3,618 miles despite 48 days of excruciating physical privation.
Bligh was one hell of a leader. Without him, even though they had the Bounty, all its stores, were located in paradise (Tahiti) and had a superfluity of enthusiastic sex partners, the mutineers managed to achieve nothing.
They ended up burning their key asset, the ship, and sinking into alcoholism and mutual murder. Nonetheless, despite these verifiable truths, to this day, Captain Bligh is a by-word for failed leadership and Fletcher Christian (the guy who led the mutiny) is remembered as a noble idealist.
Political loyalty is more often a function of fear rather of admiration. The Michael Smith episode wouldn't have happened during the Haughey years, when leadership was coercive, contemptuous and punishing. Many, in politics and media alike, cannot shake off the yearning for that kind of leadership.
Appalled yet simultaneously seduced by bullies, they are the ones who quote with horror and delight - the famous "Jump out the effing window" instruction CJ gave to a Senator who couldn't locate the door in the wood panelling of the Taoiseach's office.
And they are the ones who got most upset last week when the Taoiseach didn't instantly whack Michael Smith like a wrecking ball.
This ignores the fact that everybody who knew Smith expected him go hide behind an Estimate (given the week that was in it) after Ahern sent him a message a moron couldn't miss about being 'totally' committed to Hanly.
It also ignores the fact that the Taoiseach, in Europe towards the end of last week, knows from bitter experience it's dangerous to make judgements or take action on what's going on at home when you're in Rome trying to concentrate on the instantaneous translation of some EU worthy.
But, above all, this view misreads the Taoiseach's speed-bump style of leadership. Bertie Ahern's leadership lies pretty damn dormant most of the time.
You can stand on him with impunity. You can roll over him and he won't make an issue of it. If you hit him at injudicious speed, however, he'll knock off your exhaust pipe and make bits of your undercarriage. He won't take pleasure in it, but he'll do it with quiet efficiency.
Michael Smith may get his exhaust pipe re-attached, but his political undercarriage is going to be traumatised for some considerable time to come
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