Cowen fails to match the Roosevelt standard for political leadership

I THINK we need to be very clear about a couple of things.

First of all, the fact that Willie O’Dea is no longer Minister for Defence, and will almost certainly never be a minister again, is his own fault, and no one else’s.

The damage done to him was entirely self-inflicted. He and his friends and supporters can spend the rest of their days blaming Dan Boyle or the Greens, or the opposition. It doesn’t wash.

From the beginning of this controversy, Willie O’Dea had at least a half-dozen opportunities to clear the matter up. It would have involved telling the simple, unvarnished truth and apologising. Clean and simple.

He deliberately chose not to take any of those opportunities and little by little talked (or shouted) himself into a corner where no one could support him.

I suppose I should say for the record that I have a bit of history with Willie O’Dea. He’s had a go at me on more than one occasion (and I at him). Once, when I was critical of him in relation to disability legislation, for which he was responsible at the time, he did what he often does — he went for the man rather than the ball.

Before dealing with any of the issues I raised, he wrote a couple of paragraphs referring to me as “the most distinguished living graduate of the Joseph Goebbels School of News Management” and a “resurrected Rasputin”.

I had made the mistake of saying Minister O’Dea thought people with disabilities, and their families, were stupid. “That was personal. It was nasty,” said Willie in reply. “Not only does it debase his argument, it is plainly wrong. I will not speculate on why he chose to make such a personally vituperative attack on me. Neither will I allow it deflect me from the real debate.”

That was Willie’s style. He lived by the sword and he died (politically) by the sword. Anyone who thinks he was a victim of anything other than his own terrible judgment is wrong.

And anyone who thinks matters like this shouldn’t preoccupy the Dáil are wrong too. Ministers don’t take an oath when they accept their seals of office from the President, but they are being appointed to a job from which the highest possible standards of probity are expected. They’re the leaders of the country, a group of people who are well rewarded and are expected in return to be capable of giving direction and purpose to the people who elected them.

Ministers faces many challenges, day in and day out — even if a controversy doesn’t affect their particular portfolio they are expected to accept collective responsibility for the decisions they make together behind the closed doors of the cabinet room. That’s written into the constitution — every member of the Government is responsible for all the decisions of the Government.

And to whom is the Government, and each of its members, responsible? The constitution doesn’t beat about the bush on this point. Article 28.4.1 puts it in succinctly — “The Government shall be responsible to Dáil Éireann”.

There can be no question — the decisions of a minister, his or her actions or behaviour, and whether or not it is appropriate that he or she should continue in office — these are all critical functions of parliament in a functioning democracy. Take them away and you’ll begin to see a real erosion of basic democratic values.

So it was absolutely right that the controversy should be played out in the Dáil chamber. That’s the right and only place for it.

Except for one thing — in other jurisdictions, Willie O’Dea would have been gone before the debate started. In the House of Commons or the US Senate, debates like these never happen because leaders deal with issues like these differently. Once an issue of truthfulness emerges, it is seen elsewhere as something that’s deadly serious. Over recent years in Ireland, on the other hand, truthfulness has come to be seen as a bit of a luxury, an added extra almost, in a lot of political careers.

That’s the real damage. And it’s compounded by this fashion for tarring everyone with the same brush. “The Willie O’Dea affair is bad for politics” — how often have you heard that said over the past week? But it wasn’t bad for politics — it was bad for Fianna Fáil.

The fact that a minister was forced to account for his behaviour in the Dáil, and had to resign when he ultimately failed that test, is actually good for politics. It demonstrates that politics works.

But you’d have to wonder about the tribal attitudes that seemed to come to the surface once Willie was under pressure. The sight of the Minister for Justice snarling at the opposition, and the Taoiseach apparently entirely unaware that there was any issue of principle involved — these were deeply worrying spectacles.

I know Fianna Fáil aren’t big into self-criticism, but still you can’t imagine any of the Taoisigh of old not worrying about a minister making false assertions in a sworn affidavit. My suspicion is that if Willie O’Dea had been appointed to the cabinet by Seán Lemass or Jack Lynch, he’d have been out the door long before any opposition had a chance to put down a motion of no confidence. In those days, there were rules of behaviour and standards to live up to. Now it seems po-faced even to refer to them.

THE great US President Theodore Roosevelt once said that the strength of any republic depends on the quality of its citizens. “The average citizen must be a good citizen,” he said, “if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behoves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.”

I have to say I long for the day when that principle dawns on our leader. Being Taoiseach is a tough and lonely job — partly because if your friend lets you and/or his office down, you have to be clear sighted enough to see it and ruthless enough to do something about it. It’s not enough to drift along, relying on a tribal instinct and blaming everyone else for the problem.

This problem was caused, 100% by Willie O’Dea, and his boss should have dealt with it long before it came to the floor of the Dáil. There is no doubt that the Taoiseach’s office, with all its resources, would have had adequate early warning of the affair. The attorney general, legal adviser to the Government, would have been in a position to express a view of the seriousness of the matter.

And the Taoiseach, had he chosen to, would have been able to show real leadership, despite the personal difficulty of the decision and would have generated a lot of respect for making the hard choice. But the opportunity to lead was wasted. Again.