What we don't know yet about Brian Cowen is whether his loyalty is to the FF political machine or its republican values, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
IF YOU were to marry a rich widow whose last three husbands had all died in suspicious circumstances, you'd be inclined to watch yourself. If you took over a political party whose last three leaders have all been forced from office by scandal, you might do well to adopt a similar caution. Leaving aside all considerations of principle, you'd be well advised to take note of the circumstances of your predecessors' demise.
Brian Cowen's core value - emphasised again since he became leader - has always been loyalty. But there comes a point at which loyalty crosses over into Roy Keane's definition of stupidity - doing the same things and expecting different results. There is also a point at which preserving the thing you love (in his case Fianna Fáil) means changing it quite fundamentally. Sometimes, indeed, it is only a passionate devotee - a de Klerk with apartheid, a Gorbachev with the Soviet Communist Party - who can force a corrupted institution to embrace real change. What we don't know about Brian Cowen, and what he might not yet know about himself, is whether his loyalty is to a political machine he has inherited, or to the republican values that supposedly inhabit it.
On the face of it, there are good reasons for Brian Cowen not to draw lines in the sand or embark on radical departures. He occupies a political star around which everything in Irish politics seems to revolve. Fianna Fáil, in which Cowen has no credible challenger, is arguably more deeply entrenched in power than it has ever been. Cowen's current coalition partners are firmly attached. The Greens are happy to get on with running two important departments and John Gormley's extraordinary decision to place himself literally in the frame for Bertie Ahern's resignation speech suggests that, emotionally at least, he has gone native. The PDs now need Fianna Fáil infinitely more than Fianna Fáil needs them. But even if either party were to pull out of government, Cowen would be quite happy to do a deal with Labour, and the feeling is probably mutual. Viewed purely from the perspective of Fianna Fáil's real core value - holding on to power - the obvious conclusion would be that it ain't broke and there's no point fixing it.
Another apparent reason for simply adopting the riding instructions the Guardian newspaper famously gives to new editors - carry on as heretofore - is that there are more pressing concerns than political reform. The public has shown at elections that, in general, it is prepared to put up with remarkably low standards in public life so long as the economy is delivering prosperity. The logic for Brian Cowen would thus seem to be to retain the prosperity, and the standards will look after themselves. Unemployment, job losses, the credit crunch and the downturn in the public finances all seem far more pressing issues than the restoration of public trust in politics.
There, however, is the rub. The new economic circumstances Brian Cowen faces are also new political circumstances. For the decade between 1997, when Fianna Fáil came back to power, and 2007, the good times kept rolling, pretty much by themselves. There was enough momentum in the economy, and a sufficiently favourable international context, for Irish political leadership to be able to focus on deal-making. Dealing with Northern Ireland and social partnership were the big tasks for a Taoiseach, and they demanded a skill-set in which a degree of deviousness and cunning was not out of place. Long-term needs, like creating a decent social and physical infrastructure, could have money thrown at them in the knowledge that at least some of it would stick.
That world is gone. The economy isn't ticking over. We don't have the option of simply making deals about how to cut up the creamy cake. There isn't the money to throw at everything, while hoping for the best. As the high tide recedes, the consequences of a decade of fecklessness are becoming ever more starkly visible in a dysfunctional health service, an education system that is falling well below the world-class standards it needs to reach, the persistence of drug-racked slums, and a broadband infrastructure that is risible for a supposedly leading high-tech economy. And the changing global economy requires Ireland to become an innovative high-class society to continue to earn its living.
Brian Cowen is left with the immense challenge of dealing, in more straitened times, with the things governments he was part of failed to deal with in times of plenty. At the same time, he has to present Irish people with stark choices. Do we cut already inadequate services or raise taxes? Who pays for the hard times - the weak and vulnerable or those who have done best from the bonanza? Do we abandon stated goals like eliminating consistent poverty or use them to restore a sense of solidarity in society? If we make sacrifices in our pay packets now, will we see rewards in a few years, or are we just being taken for a ride?
Coming up with half-decent answers to those questions would be difficult in a political system that had its moral authority intact. Brian Cowen will never say so publicly, but if he's as smart as he's supposed to be, he must know that the political system of which he is now the supreme representative has utterly lost that moral authority. He must know that in his own dogged loyalty to leaders, come what may, he has helped to debase the coinage that should now be his political capital. At the simplest level, it will be hard for him to hold any of his ministers to proper standards while he maintains, as he has always done, that Bertie Ahern did nothing wrong. At the still more crucial level of public leadership in trying times, the necessary assets of credibility and authority will not be available to him unless he moves quickly to get them back.
It is worth remembering that, in or around his first year in office, Brian Cowen will have to deal with Bertie Ahern's continuing evidence at the Mahon tribunal, with that tribunal's report and with the second report of the Moriarty tribunal. He is going to have to respond, whether he likes it or not, probably to evidence of massive corruption in the planning process in the capital city and of large private donations to Bertie Ahern and possibly to allegations of abuses in the awarding of the contract for the State's second mobile phone licence. Ethical issues will force their way onto the agenda, regardless of his intentions.
In all likelihood, he is going to be faced with precisely the same moment of deep personal choice that Bertie Ahern had to face when the McCracken and Moriarty reports came out with their damning revelations about Charles Haughey. Ahern had to ditch the predecessor to whom he had been supremely loyal, even though, as we later learned, he remained utterly in his thrall. Cowen may have to ditch the ex-Taoiseach who anointed him as his chosen successor, or else stand by him nakedly and shamelessly, without the fig leaf of waiting to see what the tribunal decides.
That painful personal choice will be forced on him, but if he is a truly intelligent politician, he will make it in circumstances of his own choosing. If he has genuinely signalled a break with the past, if he has emerged from nod-and-wink culture of stroke politics and nest-feathering, he will be able to face it with confidence and with public sympathy on his side. If not, he may be left with the invidious choice of standing by the old values and being tainted by them or jumping ship at the last moment and looking cynical.
Real leaders treat challenges as opportunities, and the very size of his task gives Brian Cowen a chance to emerge, not just as his own man, but as a Taoiseach who did more than have the top job fall into his lap. He can tell his party, because it is patently true, that we can't afford the business of government to be constantly derailed by scandal and mistrust. He can start by refusing the planned rise in his own pay, thus signalling that the connection between greed and public office is being broken. He can go on to deliver the long-promised new ethics legislation; to replace the worse-than-useless controls on party funding with a ban on all large donations; and to restore the Freedom of Information Act to its original intent. He can end the system of quangos and stop the scandalous appointment of people to their boards simply because, as Bertie Ahern boasted, they are the Taoiseach's friends.
Most importantly, he could use the momentum he would gain from such a package of immediate reforms to talk openly, honestly and with authority to the Irish people about the crucial choices we face. Not all of us might agree with him, but we would be prepared to listen if we could be sure his views were shaped by nothing but his honest view of the public good. The burden of office in these trying times would still weigh heavily on him, but it might feel a little lighter for getting the monkey of misplaced loyalty off his back.