Terry Prone: Jim Gavin's withdrawal statement was ill-judged and showed no redemption

A poster for former presidential candidate Jim Gavin at the National Ploughing Championships in Offaly last month. Picture: Dan Linehan

When you open your inbox at 4am, the last thing you expect is a colourful screenshot announcing the departure from presidential contention of Jim Gavin, with a caption: “And then there were two.” 

That’s how my day started. 

Baffling, it was.

The confirmations came thick and fast, together with the judgements. 

Annoyance and contempt for the former candidate were on display, with much of both directed towards Taoiseach Micheál Martin.

“Due diligence, anyone?” read one query.

The implication of that rhetorical question was that something halfway between the FBI and the Garda vetting unit — or a private eye — should have been commissioned by Fianna Fáil before they wished Jim Gavin on us. 

This is nonsense. 

Jim Gavin: His resignation statement was full of egregious errors. Picture: Fran Veale

When you’re persuading an already famous achiever that they should run as a presidential candidate for your party, announcing you’re going to investigate them will make even the cleanest and most virtuous candidate look askance at you. 

Their every unpaid bill? Their every negative rumour? Every nasty comment made by a second cousin, once removed, who hates them for some imagined or forgotten slight?

We tend to blame social media for everything, but the reality is that, in this instance, it was old-fashioned legacy media that ruined the candidacy. 

The illusion of social media is that it is the current, or reasonably recent, error or misbehaviour that will do you damage: the photograph of a star with his arms around another star who very definitely isn’t his wife. 

But when it comes to politics, that’s not necessarily the case. 

When it comes to politics, Ireland has long, long memories, and not just in relation to the Civil War.

Those long memories go back to before the internet, and are most likely to be outed by so-called “mainstream media".

That was what happened Senator David Norris, who was flying it on a cloud of national appreciation until a writer produced an interview she’d done with him decades earlier, in which he had advanced the possibility that being introduced to sex gently by an older man might be a good experience for a very much younger male. 

Not only were the Norris prospects of the Áras done and dusted right there, but the incident left a trailing shadow over the man’s legacy.

The reality is that even if the leader of Fianna Fáil had been able to sit Jim Gavin down with the best detectives available, there was no guarantee of a different outcome. 

Just as David Norris would never have thought a random reflection on the culture of Ancient Greece would do him in, Jim Gavin, asked about unpaid bills from 16 years back, was likely — as he claimed — to have forgotten them or regarded them as insignificant to his moral standing.

None of which will stop Billy Kelleher’s eyebrows from travelling north to his hairline, because at the very least, his candidacy would have had the advantage that his colleagues, opponents, and media know him well because he’s been around forever. 

Bertie Ahern, meanwhile, may be meeting constitutional lawyers to see if a way can be found for late insertion of him as a candidate. 

You mightn’t want to bet on it happening, but for Bertie, it's never over until it’s over.

Jim Gavin at the presidential debate on Virgin last week with independent candidate Catherine Connolly, and Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys.

It’s definitively, and damagingly, over for Jim Gavin, however, and the manner of his departure helped not at all.

Resignations, apologies, and withdrawals are, in and of themselves, a route to redemption. 

Unfortunately for Mr Gavin, he did not take that redemptive route with his withdrawal statement. 

It’s easy to criticise the communications adviser involved — assuming there was one — but a candidate for the presidency must have the wisdom to look at a draft statement (assuming there was such a draft) to make sure it is unambiguous in its blame-taking and to excise anything sanctimonious in that surrender. 

That didn’t happen. 

Instead, the statement read: “I made a mistake that was not in keeping with my character and the standards I set myself.” 

The word 'mistake' will not fly, in the face of the plethora of notifications and solicitor’s letters that newspapers were ready to share. 

This was not a mistake, but rather a series of decisions consciously made. 

Mr Gavin effectively said: “I made an error that’s not in keeping with how generally wonderful I am." That was ill-judged.

But, shockingly, that wasn’t the only egregious error in Mr Gavin’s statement, which also made the claim he never shirked from a fight. 

What was the point of that assertion when he was literally doing that now? 

Similarly, towards the end of it, he expressed the hope his supporters “do not feel let down". 

The problem with that is it projects the issue onto them and their feelings, whereas it has nothing to do with their feelings. 

They have been let down. By him. 

And that’s where the final focus of the apology should have been. 

Worst of all was the reference to returning to the arms of his family.

In kindness to a man grievously damaged by a contest he entered with the best of intentions, someone should have helped him craft something short and dignified which would have convinced people nothing in his brief candidacy became him like the leaving of it.