Seven years on – it’s clear Cowen flattered to deceive

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

It’s Easter Week and a time of political anniversaries – although we’re not looking at the predictable one that has dominated all the headlines.

No, the lesson from this anniversary isn’t about how we interpret the past – but about how spectacularly wrong just about everybody can be when it comes to predicting the future.

Seven years ago, this week, Bertie Ahern stood down as Taoiseach and as leader of Fianna Fáil. On that morning all its TDS and Senators congregated on Leinster House for a group photograph.

Ahern was sitting beside Brian Cowen, the then-Minister for Finance. He very consciously leaned over and shook his hand in a very deliberate fashion. This was the visual cue that Cowen was the anointed one; that he had become Ahern’s successor by acclamation.

A few minutes later as the group of about 100 – how big Fianna Fail was back then! – broke up and went their separate ways, Cowen was mobbed by colleagues eager to touch his hem.

A little distance away, Ahern made his way back to the doors of Leinster House unaccompanied. He cut a solitary figure, a little forlorn. He had planned to stay on until he was 60 but the carpet had been swept from under his feet because of the disclosures about his personal finances.

At the time Cowen became the seventh leader of his party and Taoiseach – he had to wait a month until May 8 for it to become official – the Celtic Tiger still seemed a living breathing animal.

Everybody knew the boom was slowing down but Cowen had been talking since soon after the 2007 general election about the prospect of a “soft landing”. It was a meaningless phrase and, as it turned out, outrageously inaccurate.

Still, that April there was still optimism in the air. Cowen set out his plans for Fianna Fáil under his tenure, invoking the spirt of the Easter Rising. In private comments to TDs and Senators he quoted Patrick Pearse and the country he envisaged.

But it was to Sean Lemass that Cowen referred most, name-checking his predecessor three times in the course of that speech. Lemass, he said defined patriotism as love of country and pride in the history, literature and the culture; as well as the ability to add to those achievements.

“On this occasion on the appointment of a new leader,” he said, “it is incumbent on all to subscribe to that particular credo today. Let it be the inspiration for what we set out to do.”

Cowen told his colleagues that he would put all his energies into the role but, typically, refused to set out his stall. In a press conference that day he would not be drawn on any specifics in relation to his plans.

He did acknowledge that the country faced more difficult times but said his commitment to capital investment remained the same. That would mean the imposition of discipline on the current spending side.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.