Shane Ross: Dealing with fancy stuff like banking regulation.
Shane Ross: Dealing with fancy stuff like banking regulation.
“Because he wouldn’t be elected!” is the obvious answer, and it’s a telling one. After all, everyone knows that Kerry South hasn’t been affected by the failure of banking regulation, and the subsequent inpact on public spending, unemployment or emigration. Nor has Mayo, or Sligo-North Leitrim or Meath East. Those things only affect Dublin South, Dun Laoghaire and Dublin South East.
What’s that you say? Those things have affected those areas too? Really? Well, then, why is it that candidates who openly want to deal with national issues won’t run in those constituencies? Shane Ross is from Wicklow. Why has he chosen to run in Dublin South? Because the conventional wisdom is that Dublin South might elect a “national” politician, whereas most other constituencies, including most Dublin ones, won’t. Instead, they all want someone to stand up for the local area. Someone else in some other constituency can deal with all that national stuff. Like banking, employment, emigration, public services: Sure what’s that got to do with us ’round here?
The particular policies Shane Ross would be proposing might also be a factor in his decision to go for an upper middle-class Dublin constituency, no?
At the other end of the scale, Joe Higgins, as ideological a politician as one might wish to meet, looks very likely to get elected in Dublin West, Gerry Adams is unlikely to be focussing on potholes in Louth, and Michael D. – possibly more international than national – has been a fixture in Galway West since the early 80s.
Barack Obama, “national politician” or not, would hardly get elected in rural Texas, any more than David Cameron would stand a chance in Liverpool or Nicolas Sarkozy in Saint-Denis.