Will Bertie call out Willie’s number?
The comparison is lazy, even a bit nasty. Marx was a witty, erudite genius and a wordsmith whose one-liners are up there with Oscar Wilde.
Willie O’Dea is a poll-topper in Limerick East, a bristly defender of the Government on every conceivable topic, and a politician who can’t resist the odd swipe at the Irish Examiner.
A lot of people feel O’Dea is fated to be a serial junior minister, a half-Merc, the guy who never got the chance to swat with the big boys. For the moment, he is the junior in the Justice Department with responsibility for the equality brief. As such, he is piloting the slow boat to China otherwise known as the Disability Bill.
Once aborted, long-delayed and always contentious, we are now told the Bill will finally appear in autumn. For a Government that may yet be scuttled for being seen as scullions to the super-rich (most of whom love Ireland so much they live abroad), the bill could give balance - better than recycling twaddle about increases in budgets since 1997.
A robust bill would show they give a damn about one of the most vulnerable groups in our society.
Already we know it’s too much to ask. The Government has sounded an early warning that when we get the real thing it will fall short of rights-based legislation. Knowing O’Dea, he will defend it like Cú Chulainn, no matter what it says.
But, it begs the question - if he does get the nod from Ahern in the autumn and if the Disability Bill is as insipid as is whispered - what is his legacy, what has this guy done to deserve a big elevation?
Looking across the range of incredible talent at Bertie Ahern’s disposal, O’Dea’s claim to limousine status is as strong as anybody else’s. But, when it comes to reshuffles, often ability has little to do with it.
When you talk to politicians about who’s going to get the hoist, they almost go so far as to pull out a map of Ireland. This is the kind of stuff you hear: Cork will get one senior minister and will have three juniors; you need a senior minister in the mid-west and another in the west; there are too many ministers already in south Dublin; that area is in bad need of a Merc.
The fine art of choosing a Cabinet requires consideration of ability, yes, but also “geographics and demographics”, to quote the phrase that will forever be associated with Michael Smith, the Che Guevara of Nenagh Hospital.
And so, if Smith manages to hang on, O’Dea can forget a full ministry.
You can understand why a Cabinet could never be top-heavy with TDs from the capital or from a particular constituency. But at the same time, should it be the over-riding principle? Seemingly yes. The great writer Máirtín Ó Cadhain once spoke of an IRA Árd Chomhairle meeting he attended in Dublin in the 1940s. It was presided over by Seán McBride. At the start of the afternoon session, McBride noticed the Kerry delegation was absent. Where are they? he demanded. Somebody told him Kerry were playing in the All-Ireland final that afternoon and they had all gone to Croke Park. McBride fulminated that they were no revolutionaries if they put a GAA game above Irish freedom. It was at that moment Ó Cadhain realised McBride knew nothing about Irish politics.
But when you put it to a TD that those with real ability are often overlooked, they look at you like the village fool, because you don’t understand the Darwinist ‘natural selection’ of Irish politics.
Okay, you don’t get it. But the big failure of this Cabinet, it seems to you, has been balance. Those with honed ideological views on low taxes and small government have prevailed. The putative left-wingers around the Cabinet table have muttered occasionally but have acquiesced because they are too weak; or have failed to articulate an alternative vision; or have been tactically naïve in the face of the big swatters.
Bertie Ahern himself is amorphous, straddling both left and right - and middle and anything else in between. If the Government does want to move to the left, it will need at least one strong leftist to step up to the plate.
And you never know. Willie O’Dea, like the Lotto, it could be you. But then again, like the Lotto, it might never be you.
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