The race for the Áras is no stranger to smear campaigns. David Norris should breathe easy
I MISSED the broadcast of Pádraig Flynn’s inflammatory remarks about Mary Robinson at the last weekend of the 1990 presidential election campaign. As a staffer at Fianna Fáil headquarters, I had been detailed that Saturday lunchtime to find a copy of an interview which Robinson had given some years earlier. In it, she had made remarks which suggested she favoured nationalisation of the banks and other companies.
In those pre-internet days, this involved spending hours in the National Library scrolling back through microfiche. I had been told it was going to be used to ground the last phase of the campaign against Robinson, centring on the peculiar slogan “Is the Left Right for the Park?”
At that time, calling for nationalisation of banks was a left-wing view. It was thought by people wiser than I, that any previous comments which could be used to characterise Robinson as left-wing on property ownership, alongside her positioning as liberal on social issues, might help in the last days. When I returned to headquarters in the early afternoon, however, I found everyone had lost interest. I presented a photocopy of the relevant press cuttings but the strategists said it didn’t matter anymore: Flynn is after messing up on the radio – it is all over.
I tell the story now in case David Norris is feeling isolated this weekend. It may help him to know he is in fine company when it comes to having previous utterances parsed, analysed and misconstrued in the context of a presidential election campaign. Indeed facing down the re-emergence and distortion of past utterances has now almost become a prerequisite for election to the Áras.
While the drama of the 1997 presidential election campaign never reached the dizzy heights of the Lenihan v Robinson battle of seven years earlier, it had its own controversial moments. As we watch and listen to the current premature parade of presidential aspirants, it is worth remembering Mary McAleese only emerged as a candidate seven weeks before polling day.
When she was selected as the surprise Fianna Fáil nominee in September 1997, McAleese was well behind the presumptive Fine Gael and Labour contenders, Adi Roche and Mary Banotti. McAleese had done a spell as an RTÉ current affairs reporter in the early 1980s. She was a high-profile inclusion on the Catholic hierarchy delegation to the New Ireland Forum in 1984. She was well-known in legal and academic circles, particularly in Northern Ireland. She was, however, an unknown to the general public in the Republic.
The real challenge for the McAleese campaign was that, while those of us who met her knew instantly she had all the warmth and competences necessary, there did not appear to be enough time for the public to learn of and appreciate this. A few days after her selection she set off on a barnstorming tour leaving thousands embraced in her wake but, with only six weeks of campaigning left, the struggle for public support appeared uphill.
Then her campaign was gifted a controversy about previous remarks. A memo of a conversation McAleese had with a Department of Foreign Affairs official years earlier was leaked to the media. In those days before the WikiLeaks phenomenon, the report of the conversation between McAleese and the official caused a sensation. Her opponents used it to suggest that McAleese was sympathetic to Sinn Féin which, at that time, was politically explosive. The barrage of abuse she took on the controversy culminated in Eoghan Harris’s contention that, were she to become president, McAleese would be a “sectarian time bomb”. It sounds particularly ironic now, and Harris has apologised for it since, but it was loaded in the context of the election campaign itself.
McAleese held her nerve. She took the time to articulate her true views on Northern Ireland’s politics and the nascent peace process, which were of course much more complex than suggested by the selective quoting from the memo and by the associated media caricatures. McAleese garnered massive exposure, won plaudits from the public for her grace under fire and surged in the polls.
David Norris has handled this week’s controversy over remarks he made years ago in an interview with Helen Lucy Burke particularly well. He has shown faith in the intelligence of the electorate who, when given the opportunity, will understand the context of the remarks and will place them within the overall picture they have formed of Norris as a politician and campaigner.
What makes the attack on him particularly insidious is that it seeks to play to crude and horrible caricatures of gay men. What makes the timing of this controversy potentially so damaging is that it has broken just as Norris is approaching county councils looking for a nomination. This week, for example, the controversial Burke interview has featured in e-mails sent anonymously to many county councillors. This sabotage is clearly co-ordinated and designed to scuttle the Norris campaign even before he gets into the forum of public opinion.
Overall the presidential election is a mismatch. There are no fewer than six declared contenders and another half a dozen potential contenders. This presidential contest is Fine Gael’s to lose – which may explain why they are being so careful about choosing a candidate.
This race may still lack an obvious front runner but one thing is clear: David Norris deserves a place on the starting blocks.