The overwhelming feeling of ennui evoked by this election campaign and its discussions is indicative, I believe, of a new understanding and resignation concerning the meaning and purpose of politics. We of a certain age grew up with an idea that politics was, for all its faults, the process by which our collective life was organised and administered. Politics was, in a sense, the brain of our society, the repository of the thought process by which, as we understood it, the country was, as we used to say, writes John Waters
But this idea is, being out of date, deeply misleading as to what is happening now. The "brain" of our society is no longer to be located in any single domain. It is a diffuse and highly intricate organism, which governs our collective life in an infinitely more complex manner than was the case in the Ireland of a generation ago. The public thought process is no longer dictated, as in the past, by a small number of men looking into their own hearts, but by a tremendous tumult of conflicting voices mediated, to an extent, by the polis. In other words, the difference between the politics of my youth and the politics of today is that back then politics was the engine of public activity and now it is the brake.
Most of what happens in the public life and economy of this State happens not because of what politicians believe, say or do, but despite all this. The major issues concerning our economic and social condition have long since been handed over to multinational capital and a range of supra-national forms of governance. The nature of our collective life is decided not by who occupies Government Buildings, but by the movements of global capital, free trade, international jurisprudence and US foreign policy.
Meanwhile, at ground level, the nature of the individual's sense of and relationship with democracy has altered profoundly. Political energy expresses itself not in the windbag speeches of those clamouring for public office but in the everyday actions of people who, by going about their lives, occupations and activities, themselves dictate the nature of our society much more efffectively than any of the pointless bills which trundle through the Oireachtas.
Many of the pursuits of people in their everyday lives have come to transcend their ordinary and natural meanings to become pro-active statements concerning and contributing to the nature of society. Lobby groups, residents' associations, special interest campaigns, sporting organisations, media - all these, separately and together, are much closer to encompassing the essence of power in this society than the determinations of those sitting at the cabinet table.
For every citizen who wants something done, there is another who wants the opposite. The politician places equal value on both votes, and therefore his or her best option is to appease both interests while determining to do nothing. What the modern politician must do is listen to the tumult, hijack its main elements and give the impression that he or she is intent upon doing what the people demand, while at the same time ensuring that nothing happens to in any way upset the equilibrium best served by inertia. Modern politics is about getting into office to act as a dam against the vast surge of real democracy coming from the ground up, to appropriate the issues which people would like politics to deal with and then spend four or five years procrastinating and filibustering for fear that doing a sensible thing would alienate a different set of interests and lose you votes.
This election may mark the first complete exposure of this reality to public view. The tedium most people feel about the babble of the last fortnight has its roots in a deeper sense concerning the true irrelevancy of politics. There was a time, for example, when the Fianna Fáil election slogan, "A lot done. More to do" would have seemed inspired and inspirational.
NOW it reads as pure blather. Nobody, apart from fanatical Fianna Fáilers, really believes that the present state of this society or its economy - whatever view you might take about such - has anything much to do with anything achieved by the outgoing Government. People know the economy works because of the policies of the European Central Bank and the US Treasury Department. They know that the health service works, to the extent that it does, because doctors and nurses get out of bed in the morning and go to their workplaces. In so far as any politician can claim credit for what has occurred in the Irish economy in the past decade, you would have to go back four decades to Donogh O'Malley to identify a single act based on forethought and vision which might remotely be said to connect domestic politicians with the way things have turned out.
If you stopped people in the street and asked them to name one legislative initiative taken by the outgoing Government which figures significantly in their everyday existences, I would lay heavy odds that most people could cite only the 15 cent levy on plastic shopping bags before running out of ideas. And the only reason this particular piece of legislation has made a mark on the public consciousness is that most people have still not acquired the habit of remembering to bring a bag with them when they leave home, and are left every time conducting ridiculous debates with themselves about whether to fork out another 15 cent or carry the groceries in their arms. Such is the power of modern government.