It would be wrong to write off Fianna Fáil – Cowen's performance this week is indicative of party's raison d'etre, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE
SINCE WE don’t have the real things any more, imagine a metaphorical phone booth. A portly fellow creeps towards it, then waits outside in agonised hesitation. He is a pitiful figure, furtive and shambolic. He eventually lunges into the phone booth. We see nothing until he emerges a few moments later, transformed. He looks self-assured, brisk, in charge. Clark Cowen has turned into Super Taoiseach.
Fianna Fáil has let the Irish people down in so many ways that it is hardly surprising that it can’t even serve up the one thing that it was always so good at: entertainment. Ruairí Quinn was wrong to call the desultory challenge to Cowen a Gilbert and Sullivan farce. The Pirates of Penzance is fun; The Cowboys of Leinster House is merely dull.
For those of us who remember the high melodrama of the Haughey heaves, the surreal happening that was the fall of Albert Reynolds and even the bizarre psychodrama of Bertie Ahern’s long goodbye, this latest episode is more akin to one of those small, late Samuel Beckett pieces, all dying gasps and slow deflation. Fianna Fáil is in such a state that its would-be leaders can’t be bothered to work up a good fit of fratricidal rage.
Tempers struggle to rise to the levels of a tense round of whist in an old people’s home.
And yet, there is something at stake here. It emerges when you consider what it is that accounts for Cowen’s remarkably competent performance over the last few days. What is it that makes the speak-your-weight- machine voice suddenly sound animated? What makes the numbly disengaged figure suddenly alert and alive? What makes the man who has made the worst decisions in the history of the State so clever, so decisive, so astute? The answer is simple: an atavistic instinct for power.
The prospect of being drowned in ignominy caused the essence of Fianna Fáil’s political life to flash before Brian Cowen’s eyes. Deep in his DNA, there is the primitive but powerful energy that has made the party so formidable for so long: the absolute hunger for power. What we’ve seen in the past few days is what an extraordinarily potent force that instinct still is. It was potent enough to turn a defeated and demoralised man into a consummate Tammany Hall boss.
From the moment this wonder drug of the power instinct started to course through his veins, Cowen didn’t put a foot wrong. He out-thought and outmanoeuvred his opponents, taking the initiative, shaping the agenda, making Micheál Martin look foolish and weak. Even if he loses the vote today – and all the evidence suggests he won’t – Cowen will have gone out at the top of his tribal political game.
And herein lies a warning to those who believe that Fianna Fáil is effectively dead: so long as there is a whiff of a notion of a possibility of an intimation of power, Fianna Fáil will be still in that game. Cowen is Fianna Fáil to the marrow of his bones. What is true of him is true of the party as a whole. Cowen may be effectively dead, but the thought of power brings him to life.
Fianna Fáil may look dead after the election, but do not rule out a surge of Dr Frankenstein’s galvanising energy. The election will be a disaster, but governing machines can recover from disasters. In 1993, the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada went from an absolute majority to a virtual wipe out. Now – albeit in a somewhat different form – it is back in power. In the same year, the perennial governing party in Japan, the Liberal Democrats, came close to collapse and lost power. Within three years, it was back in business and in office.
Consider the following scenario. Fine Gael and Labour take office. Enda Kenny remains wooden and unconvincing. The coalition does not manage a substantial renegotiation of the IMF-EU deal. The domestic economy remains in the doldrums, with rising poverty, high unemployment, a mortgage crisis and social unrest. The momentum for radical institutional reform is blunted.
FF, meanwhile, has a new young leader, relatively untainted by the collapse. It allies itself in Opposition with a growing Sinn Féin. Within two years, Fianna Fáil is back in business. An FF/SF coalition wins the next election.
This is not a prediction, but it is plausible. There is a lot at stake for Fianna Fáil. The analogy of bald men fighting over a comb may seem apt today, but in the longer view, there is still something to be fought for. If, that is, Fianna Fáil retains even a notional chance of power.
Fianna Fáil’s raison d’etre is this: we will be in power a long time and have a long memory. If that claim is no longer credible, the party will fade away. If it is still believable, the whole Fianna Fáil culture will remain in place. The difference between the first proposition and the second could be as few as 20 Dáil seats. A new leader could make that difference.