You don’t have to be mad to work in politics, just chronically optimistic

A LETTER congratulating a candidate: Dear Friend, I congratulate you on coming through the convention. Because you wanted so badly to come through the convention.

First step, that convention, as you see it, to glory. A few years down the line, you’ll be a junior minister. Then a senior minister. Then Taoiseach.

You have it all sussed. You’re well on your way. The pay is good. The pension is good.

It’s just the workplace that’s nuts.

The workplace is widely assumed to be Leinster House, but in fact it’s everywhere. The moment you go outside your door, you’re on show in your constituency. (Of course, if you don’t live in your constituency, you’re at an immediate disadvantage, because your opponents will portray you as pig-ignorant of all important local issues while portraying themselves as being so intimate with matters local, they could probably identify every wheelie bin in the constituency. By feel. In the dark.) Being on show, whether in your constituency or on television, means attention to how you look. Awful, isn’t it? Voters shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or a candidate by their thigh. But they do, petal. They do.

That’s one of the illogical, irrational but ever-present factors up with which you have to put. And you know what’s worse? Media, for tut-tutting or prurient purposes, will draw attention to thigh-display and push shapely thigh-owners to the top of the poll.

What’s that? You refuse to do poll-dancing? You’re right, of course. But you’re missing the point. The point is that whether someone is being lashed for not apologising or pictured for thigh-display, it’s all COVERAGE. It stitches the name into the mind of the voter. And enough voters are sufficiently bored or irritated by mainstream politics to give a preference in the forthcoming election to someone whose name is familiar because of being slightly different.

Appearance may not have been as exigent a factor pre-television, but the New York Herald newspaper, a century-and-a-half ago, complained that one candidate not only couldn’t speak good grammar, but was “the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms and hatchet-face ever strung upon a single frame. He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly”.

Now, you will say that Abraham Lincoln, the “fourth-rate rural lawyer” thus described, was above such trivial considerations. And you will be wrong. During the campaign, he sent a letter to an 11-year-old fan.

Her name was Grace Bedell, and she had written to him recommending that he grow a beard, “for your face is so thin” and “all the ladies like whiskers”.

In his reply, Lincoln seemed to give the suggestion serious consideration.

“As to the whiskers,” he wrote, “having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?”

Begin it now he did, though. Imagine - Abraham Lincoln Does a Make-over.

By mid-campaign, he was bearded.

No, I’m not saying you should grow a beard. I’m saying that, if you’re a man, you should not go bald. You’ll find it hard to list many successful male politicians, national or international, who are bald.

Male or female, candidates should not gain weight. Running between meetings of competitive tedium all day long, canvassing in rotten weather and racking up mileage (within the speed limit) in your car on your own, the quick sugar-blast from a Crunchie or a bag of chips or a couple of pints (not if you’re driving) is infinitely seductive. Some of us card-carrying life-long members of the fatso club can prove that being a stone or two (or three) overweight does not mean you’re not energetic or effective, but that’s in real life. In politics, it’s different. Just play back in your head the negative comments you’ve heard when any politician given to heaviness appears on TV. Particularly a female politician.

On the other hand, if you’re young, female and beautiful, you must learn the Michelle Rocca approach. The beautiful Michelle spent the first minutes of any encounter proving she was as sloppy and disorganised as whoever she was talking to. That way, they decided there was no harm in her, beauty notwithstanding.

Putting all those peripherals to one side, let’s look at your probable career path. Every other job these days has specs and competencies attached to it. Politics doesn’t, as the Sean Haughey affair demonstrates.

Here’s a nice fella who has surmounted a name and a relationship with quiet dogged dignity by solid work in his constituency over a couple of decades. That qualifies him to continue to do solid work in his constituency.

It doesn’t qualify him for ministerial rank, any more than 20 years as a car mechanic in the local garage qualifies someone to design Ferraris.

If he gets it now, it’ll be because he threw a wobbler. And where, you ask yourself, does that leave another good constituency worker of demonstrably wider competence named Jim Glennon? Short answer: sitting, wobbler-free and ministry-free, hoping for the wind to change.

Let’s get back to you, though. You, the new candidate.

Getting through the convention wasn’t easy, and you’re on a high as a result. It’s a high that won’t last. Because you’ve crossed the Rubicon into Contemptville. The general public has a number of immutable convictions, you see, one of which is that all politicians are the same: all of them are venal and out for themselves. (Except a couple of dead ones. It’s easy to admire the dead.) Up to now, whenever you articulated a vision for something, people admired you. From now on, whenever you articulate a vision, people will say you’re only saying that to get elected.

You’ll get over that. It will be less easy to get over the betrayals, and they will come thick and fast. The day you make a mistake, check your mobile phone for messages of support from other politicians you’ve gone out of your way to help. They’ll be as few and far between as statements issued to media backing you up.

Your family will be chuffed to death the day you get elected, and chuffed even further the day you become even a Minister of State. They’ll be a lot less chuffed when your first cousin once removed gets done for speeding or drugs and ends up on the front pages, rather than figuring in a forgettable paragraph on page 14, because they share a DNA strand with you.

Depressing you, am I? Well, you know something, honey, there’s the final rub. I shouldn’t be able to depress you. If you want to do politics as a career, you have to be unreachable by nay-sayers. You have to be buoyant, brave, sceptical - and chronically optimistic about the capacity of good people to improve the world.

And if you have all that going for you, why on earth aren’t you setting out to run a charity or a hospital or a business? Some job where they don’t shift the goalposts on a daily basis?