An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Young Buck on the Make.

Like a jackal, but without the conscience.

Although not his sole hunting ground, you’ll see him in greatest numbers in Fianna Fail. He’ll be in his traditional garb, a slightly too large suit, and a good sensible pair of Clark’s brogues that can either do a bit of canvassing or can polish up for the funeral of a county councillor.

But it’s in the eyes that you can tell him. He tries to do a bit of the “Noel Treacy/Brian Lenihan Snr. Hail fellow well met” thing when he meets you, but he hasn’t got in down yet, in that you can see his eyes looking over your shoulder for someone more advantageous to him. If the junior minister with special responsibility for transferring taxpayer funds from MRI machines to parliamentary party cronies enters the room, he’s gone.

The key to him is, like the Holy Spirit, to be everywhere at once, always looking for an opportunity. You’ll see him doing a few days canvassing for minister X or Candidate Y, always waiting for the opportunity to grab for a co-opted council seat or a special advisor job.

Curiously, he has almost no interest in politics or political issues themselves. If the party line at the moment is the rounding up and extermination of Billy Joel fans, then he’s all in favour of it, until it isn’t. The fact that his mother is in a shit nursing home, or that he’s a closet homosexual, issues that would politicise other people, don’t apply here. That’s just stuff to be hidden from the other young bucks at the cumann meeting because they can smell the blood in the water. Of course, if he finds out that one of them is gay first, he’ll out him faster than he can say three decades of the rosary in front of that bachelor holy joe senator who’s looking for someone to fill his recently resigned council seat. And if the senator needs anything else filled, in return for the seat, he’s amenable to that too.

Hug a German today.

Make it good. A €110 million hug. Here’s why.

Top Tory Henchman to run Libertas campaign.

Have a goo at this, from conservativehome.com

The Germans treat us like adults, and we don’t like it.

A friend tells us a home truth.

There’s a tendency amongst the anti-Lisbon crowd to regard anyone who tells a negative home truth as a “bully.” The German Ambassador to Ireland’s recent remarks here are statements of the bleeding obvious to anyone who bothers to inform themselves about the EU.

 But what the ambassador said remains what it is. An accurate and truthful assessment of our situation.  

Ambassador Christian Pauls is telling the truth. LIbertas don’t like that, and Libertas are probably being quite savvy in recognising that Irish people sometimes don’t like hearing the truth. Indeed, we have been brought up on a generation of politicians who have point blank refused to confront us with reality, hence our shock over the current economic crisis.

A Curious DVD I watched: The Trojan Horse.

I’m not really recommending this, as it was a bit slow and struggling to be profound, but worth mentioning because of  its curiousity value.

Basically, The Trojan Horse is a Canadian mini-series starring (And co-written by) Paul Gross, whom you may remember as the eccentric mountie Benton Fraser in the tv series “Due South” . It’s about a joint Canadian-EU plot to rig a US presidential election.

The series is actually a sequel to a series called “H20″ where Gross played the Canadian prime minister dealing with a mysterious conspiracy.

The conclusion is unusual, and based on a real life event, but what is notable is a rant Gross gives during the movie about his vision of the world. Curiously, it is worded in such a way that would shock most Americans, yet as a European sounded quite reasonable!

Only available on region two with Dutch subtitles at the moment.  

Great Books you should read: The Right Nation.

Guns, grits and The Good Book!

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s 2005 “The Right Nation” is slightly dated since the Obama victory (And the collapse of the global financial system.), but still well worth reading. It gives Europeans in particular a fascinating insight into how political concepts we take as a given are regarded as completely alien in the US, and vice versa.

To their credit, the authors have painstakingly teased out examples as to how even moderate Americans can voice calm positions that would be regarded as the bastion of the far right within the EU, such as, for example,  the Clinton/Kerry/Obama position on the death penalty. All are in favour, to varying degrees.

The book also gives some wonderful examples of the difference, between European and American thinking, including a quote from FDR that if he could put one book into the hands of every Russian it would be the Sears Roebuck catalogue, or one unnamed EU foriegn minister pointing out, about American military might, that ” Even if America has the biggest hammer, not every problem is a nail.”  It also points to areas of American life that puts Europeans to shame, pointing out, for example, that over 95% of NRA members vote, and as a result their organisation matters, not because they are right wing, but because they’re civically engaged.   

Elect Sarah Carey.

The most honest analysis of our economic situation I’ve seen.

Would give her a vote, as opposed  to some of the  fencesitting spineless opinion-free rotting corpses we currently have sitting in the Dail.

Let Cowen be Cowen.

There comes a time.

I recently had a discussion with a politically astute pal as to who would be the dream candidate for Taoiseach in the current crisis. We tossed around various names, many from outside politics, until she hit the nail.

” Of course, if the real Brian Cowen were Taoiseach, he could do it.”

That’s the thing. We’d both seen Brian Cowen, before he became Taoiseach, speak in private, without notes. He was thoughtful, inspiring, and did that thing that Fianna Fail ministers always shy away from. He showed how smart he was. I went into the meeting with a low opinion of him, and came out thinking that this guy could be The Guy. He wasn’t Obama, but he wasn’t a million miles away either.

It’s no secret that I’m not exactly Fianna Fail friendly, but I would hope I’m not just a knee jerk anti-FFer either. If Fianna Fail changed, I’d give it a second look, but that means Brian Cowen taking the leash off, and deciding what matters. The country, or Fianna Fail.

Take junior ministers. Cutting the number of junior ministers will save buttons, and severely piss off the FF parliamentary party. But it will send a message to the country about how serious things are. Brian Cowen can be a popular leader within Fianna Fail, or he can be Taoiseach. I’m not sure, in the current climate, if he can be both.

Sometimes, there are things more important than getting re-elected. Ask David Trimble. He destroyed his own party in the process, but history will remember him as a man who paid a sacrifice for peace, and Ian Paisley as the man who always took the easy option.

David Trimble, Sean Lemass, Captain Terence O’Neill, Harry S. Truman, or F.W. de Klerk were all very unpopular when they left office. But when history judges them, it will judge them all as men who stood up and were men when they had to be. Brian Cowen has the ability to do the same.

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Politician expresses opinion shock, part 2.

Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, why don’t we have  TDs willing to express their opinions like this British Labour MP, Tom Harris?

Sad News for West Wing Fans.

Ron Silver RIP

Ron Silver, the talented, thoughtful and at times controversial actor who played political strategist Bruno Gianelli, has died of cancer.