Government survival is a slap in the face for media critics

WHEN Michael McDowell removed his teeth from Bertie Ahern’s leg long enough to whisper “We’ve survived,” it was an awful let-down to two groups.

The first group was the small cohort of Fianna Fáil backbenchers who live for the day when they can tell the PDs where to stick it.

The second group was a much larger cohort of media, who’d had a great run, first threatening Bertie with McDowell, then threatening McDowell with political ruin for not delivering on the anti-Bertie threats. For one brief shining fortnight, journalistic noses scented the distinctive aroma of giblet soup, the giblets to be donated by Bertie.

When giblet soup came off the menu, commentators and pundits had their chance to sit back and learn from the people of Ireland, who had made a sophisticated judgment: ‘‘We don’t like what this man did in this instance, but, set against the need for him to continue in the job, we are prepared to disregard it.’’

Only one of the leading pundits set out to learn a lesson from the opinion polls. Alison O’Connor publicly said that a lot of commentators (herself included) over the previous three weeks, had their heads in the general area of their posteriors and that the general public had been way ahead of them.

For the most part, though, media just continued to warble the “Bertie’s damaged” dirge. This anthem suggested that in some way apparent only to the wise, Bertie was not really home free at all. It didn’t matter that McDowell had let him off. He was still screwed. His position might seem tenable, but some vague lethal damage had been done.

It had a faint ring of illogical truth to it, like your mother telling you that you caught the flu because you wouldn’t button your cardigan up to the top like she always told you to.

And it was complete nonsense.

It presupposed that, eight months from now, voters in Bertie’s constituency were going to stand in the polling box smacking the palm of their hand off their forehead while saying to themselves, “I always gave the Bert my first preference, but hell, after that Manchester whiparound, I’ll only give him my third.” It was never going to happen, any more than voters in Cork South West were going to say “Bertie was so damaged by buying his house from whatshisname the bus driver, I can’t give Denis O’Donovan a vote at all at all.”

This “damaged” plaint is so much hooey. Bertie Ahern is damaged only to a small number of hacks whose fidelity to their personal convictions is as admirable as their impartiality is not. They’re the ones who put signing cheques for CJ up there with genocide and torturing the neighbour’s cat as indicators of entrenched villainy.

The three weekend polls which knocked the struts out from under the “Bertie still standing but fatally frayed” consensus happened at an odd time. They happened when Bertie Ahern was doing what he does best and what has brought peace to this country: keeping contenders talking until they get fed up being contenders. Bertie bear-hugs people into submission.

That’s what he did in Scotland. That’s what the public knew he would do.

They saw no point in taking out a CEO who had the capacity to end atrocity because that CEO had a deficit in his financial rectitudes. Just as Lincoln, in the |US Civil War, left an alcoholic general in position, because, drunk, that general was better than any of the others, sober, the public made a proportionate and practical choice. And got ticked off for it by media.

This, in turn, revived “The Lenihan Effect.” The Lenihan Effect happened during the Presidential Election which put Mary Robinson in the Park. The humiliation of Brian Lenihan briefly consolidated the loose edges of the Fianna Fáil vote, so that he got a higher proportion of first preferences than any other candidate in history. (It was the fact that he got no transfers that sank him). The same thing has happened in the wake of the Whiparound furore. Fianna Fáil Ministers and backbenchers, this weekend, found themselves in the middle of a surge of angry approval. The wishy-washy among the faithful, who, over the past few months, had been saying; “Hmm. I dunno.” started to say something quite different. In effect, they said: “Now we’re willing to vote for you. Just give us a few good reasons.” Peace, the SSIAs and a couple of smart moves in health could be those reasons.

BY corollary, this weekend presented Enda, Pat, Trevor and all members of a putative Rainbow with a huge new challenge. That challenge is greatly complicated by the fear that if they continue to attack the Government, they will be seen only as whingers, but if they don’t, they will be seen as weak. Their best hope is that the polls may provoke insufferable arrogance on the Government benches. They’re grimly aware that media, baulked of Bertie’s giblets for soup-making, blame them for the whole thing. (Media’s capacity for insightful self-blame is on the small side). Lucinda Creighton, Fine Gael councillor on Dublin’s South Side, got the first free sample of the backlash when Vincent Brown veered away from Bertie’s finances, focusing instead on those of her party. How come, Browne wanted to know, FG went from bankruptcy (before they got lucky and snuck into Government last time around) into a loadsamoney situation once they were in power? Lucinda was not for confessing. Lucinda was not sure who did what, back then, but she was sure it was all above board.

Browne snorted at her. Sighed at her. Ran his respiratory harassment system at full bore at her. Eventually, he lost what we’ll laughingly call his patience.

“Do Fine Gael train you in waffling?” he demanded.

“No,” she told him. “But maybe they should send us out to RTÉ to learn it here.”

Now, there’s a woman with a political future...

Meanwhile, over in Fianna Fáil is a man who’s written finis to his political future: Jim Glennon, TD.

I should confess, at this point, to a brief and physical relationship with Glennon. I was introduced to him, some years back, by my sports-mad husband, who told the former rugby international that I believed “cauliflower ear” was a metaphor, rather than a syndrome. Glennon courteously allowed me to examine his ears. Once you’ve been intimate with Glennon’s auditory organs, you’re never quite the same again.

Jim Glennon’s announcement, yesterday evening, that he’s taking his ears and the rest of him out of politics, was wonderfully timed.

If he’d made the announcement the day the Dáil resumed, it would have seemed like a personal vote of no confidence in the leadership. If he’d made it during Leak Week, it would have been worse. If he’d done it during Standoff Week, it would have been catastrophic.

To do it in the midst of positive opinion polls and good news on the North was a masterstroke.