Gallagherism - the Magic Door to the Presidency

There are strange stirrings in the Presidential election. Michael D remains favourite to win it – he’s the old dog for the hard road and he won’t be shooting himself in the foot anytime soon. But the rise of Seán Gallagher, as reported in this morning’s Irish Times, is astonishing.

It tells us a lot about the country, and is further evidence of the distance between the political and media elite and the ordinary people of Ireland, the ordinary people who have to find a way to survive the battering of recent and coming years.

There’s no good reason Gallagher should be challenging. Only Dana has less money. Labour, Sinn Féin and Fine Gael have more troops – sorry Martin – on the ground, and Mary Davis seems to have the most resources among the independents. And yet it’s Gallagher that’s coming out on top. Why?

He’s not postering. His website is, frankly, cook. His only exposure is in the shouting matches that masquerade as debates. How in holy Hell is Gallagher capturing the people’s imaginations?

Lack of baggage is Gallagher’s first moment of separation. People are deciding by process of elimination, and there are stronger reasons to object to Dana, Davis, Mitchell, McGuinness and Norris than they are to object to Gallagher or Michael D.

But it’s still remarkable that Gallagher is getting so much capital with so little exposure and less money. It’s can’t be just because of who he’s not. There has to be something else.

An Spailpín’s theory is that Gallagher is capturing the voters’ imagination because he says that he can create jobs as President.

It’s all very well to talk about visions and representing Ireland and the rest, but people living in the real world would sooner be able to pay the mortgage than listen to a lot of old blather about fairness, equality and respect. The Irish people have a lot of respect for the pound note. Surviving a famine leaves a pragmatic streak in the folk memory.

And this is what’s resonating for Gallagher. The country is falling to pieces. People want work. They want to pay their mortgages and have some sort of standard of life. If Gallagher says he’ll do that as first citizen, why not give him a shot? We can worry about pride at home, respect abroad later. This week we’re minding the job and paying the mortgage, thank you.

Of course, the President of Ireland can’t create jobs. Deputy Flanagan was correct in describing him or her as a person whose job is to cut ribbons. But you can’t say that in the middle of an election. You can’t say the President can’t do a damn thing, but we’re spending all this money on the election and office because we fancy a soft job up in the Park.

Gallagher can’t be attacked on the basis that he can’t do what he’s promising to do because that then means admitting the President doesn’t do a damn thing, really. That sort of admission will only make people who are still furious about what’s happened the country even more annoyed, and that level of fury is at Gas Mark 4 as it is.

Seán Gallagher has found the perfect storm and it could blow him right into the Phoenix Park. And once he’s there, what odds? He can’t create any jobs bar his own. He’ll be solid as a rock for seven years, step down, and lecture happily in America for the rest of his days.

Even though Gallagherism can’t deliver jobs, at least the people will have sent a message to the political elite that jobs are what count. Let’s hope there are ears to hear.

Civil War Politics is Alive and Well in Ireland

The Presidential election, which had been so boring but has now sprung into spiteful life, has already proved one thing beyond all doubt: civil war politics is alive, well and thriving in Ireland.

Martin McGuinness’ entry, and his very strong chance of victory, has galvanized a moribund Fine Gael campaign. All week they have queued up to take shots – ho, ho – at McGuinness and all he stands for. While Fianna Fáil’s footsoldiers are much more sanguine about the prospect of President McGuinness. This is the insurmountable difference between the parties; their attitudes to the North, and bloody history of island.

Fianna Fáil have been deathly quiet about McGuinness, even though it is they who are in greater political danger from the rise of Sinn Féin. But even though their existence is threatened by the rise of Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil apparatchiks can’t muster the level of vitriol that blows up like a volcano in every Fine Gael heart at the very thought of a Shinner about the place.

Part of that Fianna Fáil quietude could be a hangover from another exercise in shooting themselves in the foot. Fianna Fáil’s declining to run a candidate in the Presidential election made sense in that the election of the First Ribbon-Cutter (thank you, Deputy Flanagan) is of secondary importance to preparing 2016 General Election candidates in the Local Elections of 2014. But they can never have imagined that Sinn Féin would pull off such a masterstroke as the entry of McGuinness. McGuinness’ candidacy has changed everything.

It is interesting to wonder if Sinn Féin would have run McGuinness if Fianna Fáil had run a candidate – An Spailpín suspects they would have kept their powder dry and not have brought so big a gun to the front. But that’s for the historians to worry about later.

In the present, the Fianna Fáil top brass can only lick yet another wound while knowing that a very big chunk of the fanbase will follow the flag and the republic, standing with Emmet and Wolfe Tone. The fact its someone else beneath the mast is of secondary importance.

While Fine Gael brings the fight to the Shinners, just like always. Fine Gael is the party that bedded the institutions of the state into the fabric of the country during the Dála of the first ten years of independence. As such, Fine Gael tend to defend those institutions with a religious zeal that Fianna Fáil have never been able to muster, despite their greater time in power. This Fine Gael zeal is especially interesting in this time of national crisis, when the institutions of the state have so clearly let us down.

The nasty sectarianism already evidenced in the campaign – that while Martin McGuinness is good enough for Nordies he is utterly out of the question for the good folk of the south – is perhaps another reflection of the reverence in which Fine Gael hold the institutions of the (southern) state. While they view the North as a failed state, Fine Gael hold the southern state to be just fine.

Well, it’s not. It’s really not. The evidence of the crash is that the institutions of the southern state have failed her people, and the fact that the new broom government are using a very old broom indeed for all their promises is something that can only fill the average citizen with despair.

Another reason why McGuinness is so attractive a candidate. The political establishment’s harping on about McGuinness’ past shows they are out of touch with the Irish present, where more and more people are beginning to realise that there may be more than one failed state on the island.

The First Ribbon-Cutter election isn’t that important in itself, but may be the beginning of a national conversation about who we are and who we want to be. The good and decent Unionists of the North were asked to put up with a lot for the sake of what they were assured was progress and a new tomorrow. For the people of the South to say that’s what’s good enough for the North isn’t good enough for the South suggests we have still to learn the lesson of history after all these bloody years. God help us.