INSIDE POLITICS:In dark times, many voices claim to know the way. Our Taoiseach too often gets lost in the background babble, writes Mark Hennessy
GEORGE LEE dominated my thoughts when I bought my house. In fact, I could not stop thinking about him when I signed the papers. Fixed-rate mortgage or variable? I could not decide, but I knew I could not spend the next few years reacting with an itch every time I saw George on the telly.
Would rates be going up? What has he heard? Oh God, can I afford this bloody house? I opted for a fixed-rate rather than variable. Of course, it turned out to be a mistake and I paid 8.25 per cent while interest rates fell all around me, and I slept on a sunbed for longer than was necessary for lack of any other furniture.
Listening to George on RTÉ's Morning Ireland yesterday, one could not quibble with much of what he said. It is the fact that he is enjoying it so much that bothers me.
However, George does have the benefit of being a brilliant communicator, who knows how to use language to influence, to convince, to inform, and, sometimes, to frighten.
It is a lesson that others could learn, and, perhaps, one might start with Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Fine Gael's Enda Kenny. In the Dáil on Wednesday, one cringed.
Cowen slouched, muttered into his microphone, inaudible to the press sitting just feet away in the gallery. He cannot hide his intellectual contempt for Kenny, and cannot work up the enthusiasm or interest to act as if he has to concentrate to deal with him.
There are times when one can almost sympathise. Fine Gael has a tendency to raise the expectations bar for Kenny about an upcoming Dáil "battle", only then for him to fail to fire a shot. And it was so on Wednesday.
Kenny mangled questions and rambled on and on but, nevertheless, over the Dáil's two sitting days, Fine Gael did leave a suspicion in the public's mind that the Government is lacking some direction.
Putting Kenny to one side, however, Cowen fails to remember that the real audience is not the Mayo man, or, indeed, anyone else in the chamber. It is the public outside.
Last Wednesday was a day for a degree of political theatrics by the Government - even allowing for the fact that it wants to keep its powder dry for the budget three weeks away.
It needed the image of a forceful Taoiseach - in charge, a man with a plan with rhetorical flourishes and gestures as he told us that this will be our finest hour, etc etc . Cowen understands this perfectly when he is talking to his own in Fianna Fáil. He just does not seem to understand it when he is out in the wider arena, or he simply cannot be bothered.
Inside Fianna Fáil, he can be passionate, lucid and thoughtful, giving off the feeling he cares that he persuades his audience. He does not, however, manage the same degree of engagement elsewhere, especially when he is dealing with the press. If Cowen, as I would argue, has intellectual contempt for Kenny, you can imagine for yourself how far lower in the pecking order come the press.
And there are times when he is right to be contemptuous, particularly when he encounters them in caravans during summer holidays, or when they advise him not to be photographed with a golf club during his summer holidays, or when they advise him that it is a political sin of the grossest magnitude to sing the Mountains of Mourneover a few pints at a private party after work.
But there are times when it is best to put such feelings aside, and regard the press for what we are - unimportant in ourselves, but a conduit to everyone else.
Listeners to RTÉ's Drivetimethe other day would have heard Cowen, uninterrupted, for the most part, by journalists. Many will have switched off from a toneless, cliche-ridden monologue by a man who seemed prepared to stay at the microphone, but yet seems not to care, or understand, that one has to at least give the impression that one cares what one's audience thinks. In the current climate, it seems odd to recommend this, but Cowen could do worse than take a leaf from Gordon Brown's book.
Speaking to the British Labour Party this week, Brown tried to engage people, tried to capitalise on his traits, rather than suffer for them: Yes, I am a dour sod, but I have what it takes. At least, it displayed a willingness to heed some advice, to accept that one is not the fount of knowledge.
So far, Cowen had an idyllic honeymoon, and it has been all downhill from there on, though Wall Street's convulsions have allowed him to wrap an Irish recession in global swaddling clothes. But it is an Irish recession - and Ireland would be in recession regardless of what happened anywhere else - and Cowen played his role in bringing it about.
For all of his woes, Cowen is fortunate he is leading a party that is united behind him, or simply still unaware of how much trouble they are in. However, this declared acceptance by FF TDs that they know that hard decisions are needed will not last a winter of community meetings where they get their legs kicked off.
Then, they will need Cowen to have engaged and connected with voters: to have spoken to them in language that all understand, and to have acted as if he cares what they think. Now, Cowen has to lead Ireland through troubled waters and out of them. And actions alone will not do it.
Language matters in politics. Body language matters in politics. Theatre matters.
The dialogue in every chapter of human life is eventually dominated by someone. It can be George Lee foretelling the end of the world, or David McWilliams, or a host of others. Or it can be otherwise.
Cowen may not be able to ensure his is the dominant voice, but he needs to realise that he has to try. In the meantime, I have a fixed-rate mortgage coming to an end in the spring. This time, I won't be listening to George.
Stephen Collins is on leave