Political World
Dodging the question – but not the bullets
Twenty years ago, you could always spot the politician who had been through the media interview bootcamp known as the Bunny Carr media charm school.
The reference to Bunny Carr (an RTE television personality many moons ago) was to the communications company he founded, Carr Communications.
The particular methods were perfected by the husband and wife team of Tom Savage and Terry Prone when doing media training with politicians.
The style became parodied by a stock response to a tricky or sticky question: “I’m very glad you asked me that question.” Of course, the question would never be answered.
A generation of politicians, many of them in Fianna Fáil, privately swore by the training they received to deal with those clever jumped-up cynical know-it-all presenters.
Over the years, Ministers and their opposition markers have become very adept at not answering question on live television or radio, or using a formula of words prepared by handlers. Any brief for any senior politician will anticipate every difficult issue and question that will come up and will also brief on what the appropriate response will be.
Politicians avoid answering the direct question by answering a completely different question uninvited.
No matter what question they have been asked they will respond with an equally uninvited summary (and not a short one) of all the achievements of the administration since coming into office.
In the fast-moving world we live in politicians know that the clock is their friend not their enemy. The slots allotted to live interviews have shortened. So a canny politicians can give long and convoluted answers (and for some bizarre reason Alan Shatter comes to mind) and effectively run down the clock.
Another thing a politician can rely on is that journalists are human beings and not of the chess grandmaster variety. So they will ask the hard question, mar dhea, and then not really listen to the response given by the politician. So instead of picking up on an inconsistency or flaw or absence, they will blithely move on to the next question having failed to elicit the required information.
And the last I’ll allude to is a relatively new media phenomenon: the doorstep interview.
This has emerged really only in the last 15 years, since the advent of local and independent radio.
They were originally designed to give radio journalists an opportunity to get a short sound-byte from a leading politician that they could use for their hourly bulletins.
But now they have become the main form of interview for politicians, most notably Taoisigh.
They usually take place before or after a formal event and allow journalists to ask questions of the politician. Each journalist is allowed one question. If the answer is not satisfactory, there is no chance of a follow-up. The next journalist will be more interested in their own question than in following up.
The upshot is that it allows a politician to pick and choose. If he or she doesn’t like the question, they can quickly answer it with some platitude and then move onto the next question.
On the face of it, it seems democratic. All the journalists get a chance to ask a question. But in reality it is the exact opposite. A skilled politician can play the crowd and can tell them as little or as much as he or she wants. For a reporter it is a deeply frustrating experience to walk away from such interviews knowing that you haven’t even scratched the surface.
For more from Harry McGee and his insights into the Garda Taping issue see this week’s Connacht Tribune
Connacht Tribune
The fine art of good timing when it comes to elections
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Connacht Tribune
Inch protest arguments are more subtle than Oughterard
World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
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The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Connacht Tribune
Sinn Féin hunt for seats in ‘locals’ across Galway
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.