I know it’s bad manners to gloat. I know I should not take glee in the misfortunes of another, nor dance on the grave of their political ambitions, but I cannot help myself. If truth be told, I haven’t really tried either – I am but a flawed human being and happy to be so.
It was a triple whammy. He lost his seat, resigned from public life, and the party was all but wiped out. Ah, it was a moment to savour, to replay on a loop, roll around the tongue and suck sweetly on its meaty juices of comeuppance. It was also pure McDowell, dramatic, knee-jerk, self-serving and egotistical.
The decision to steal the moment, to up the ante and grab lasting attention was again based on his own priorities, to hell with anyone else. The PD leader abandoned his own party members, left wounded, bloody and routed on the electoral battlefield.
If there was ever evidence needed that McDowell is unworthy of being a leader, it was there on Friday night after the election, as he stropped out of the RDS counting centre in a bad imitation of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. By Sunday, two days after the election results, McDowell had still not spoken with his party.
When interviewed on Marian Finucane’s Sunday radio show, Tom Parlon – president of the Progressive Democrats who lost his Laois-Offaly seat – despairingly but gamely tried to excuse his party leader’s silence. It is perhaps the only and last time I will ever feel sorry for a Progressive Democrat. Parlon bravely accepted the loss of his own seat and then attempted to salvage his party’s credibility with dignified performances in his own post-election media appearances.
McDowell has never shown any respect or support for the underdog. Ironically, last Friday his own party became the underdog, and true to his record, McDowell treated them with the same political callousness and sweeping disregard he has always reserved for the vulnerable.
The cheer that rose up from the RDS counting centre as he departed was echoed around the pubs and living rooms of the country. I cheered too, loud and long and high-fived it with everyone in my immediate circle. Then I skipped with a veritable lightness of foot over to my neighbours’ house, keeping my promise to share a celebratory bottle or two should McDowell get hammered at the polls. My neighbours are good, decent people with a young family, who despite their own struggles refuse to have any truck with the politics of division, discrimination and scaremongering – McDowell’s stock in trade. They and I will lose no sleep over his loss to Irish politics.
Neither do I feel I have to show compassion or generosity and salute a fallen warrior, for this was a man who fought dirty. An arrogant bully who kneed human rights in the groin, an harasser of the weak and the disenfranchised, a cynical manipulator of issues to suit his own personal aggrandisement, an avaricious ego ever ready to jostle and elbow his way to the nearest microphone, newspaper headline or television camera. Political obituaries are bemoaning his absence from Government as a dervish-like force for neo-liberalist economics, a skilful parliamentary debater and a never-disappointing source of controversy and colour in the Dáil. Aw shucks.
However, deep in my gut, I have a sneaking suspicion we have not seen the last of our recent Tánaiste and Minister for Justice. His country retreat in Rooskey – the unwanted attentions of careless duck-hunters notwithstanding – will be no replacement for the adrenalin-feed of the public arena that his ego requires. I give it a couple of months before he starts putting the final touches to his comeback concert. For if we know anything about Michael Mc Dowell, we know that he is a political diva – demanding, selfish and ultimately craving the limelight.
So be afraid, but not too afraid, because comebacks of the political kind are diminished affairs and it is pretty hard to make it back without a party.
Meanwhile, let us party on, because as the old song says, “the divil is dead and buried in Killarney” – or in this case, Ranelagh.
The decision to steal the moment, to up the ante and grab lasting attention was again based on his own priorities, to hell with anyone else. The PD leader abandoned his own party members, left wounded, bloody and routed on the electoral battlefield.
If there was ever evidence needed that McDowell is unworthy of being a leader, it was there on Friday night after the election, as he stropped out of the RDS counting centre in a bad imitation of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. By Sunday, two days after the election results, McDowell had still not spoken with his party.
When interviewed on Marian Finucane’s Sunday radio show, Tom Parlon – president of the Progressive Democrats who lost his Laois-Offaly seat – despairingly but gamely tried to excuse his party leader’s silence. It is perhaps the only and last time I will ever feel sorry for a Progressive Democrat. Parlon bravely accepted the loss of his own seat and then attempted to salvage his party’s credibility with dignified performances in his own post-election media appearances.
McDowell has never shown any respect or support for the underdog. Ironically, last Friday his own party became the underdog, and true to his record, McDowell treated them with the same political callousness and sweeping disregard he has always reserved for the vulnerable.
The cheer that rose up from the RDS counting centre as he departed was echoed around the pubs and living rooms of the country. I cheered too, loud and long and high-fived it with everyone in my immediate circle. Then I skipped with a veritable lightness of foot over to my neighbours’ house, keeping my promise to share a celebratory bottle or two should McDowell get hammered at the polls. My neighbours are good, decent people with a young family, who despite their own struggles refuse to have any truck with the politics of division, discrimination and scaremongering – McDowell’s stock in trade. They and I will lose no sleep over his loss to Irish politics.
Neither do I feel I have to show compassion or generosity and salute a fallen warrior, for this was a man who fought dirty. An arrogant bully who kneed human rights in the groin, an harasser of the weak and the disenfranchised, a cynical manipulator of issues to suit his own personal aggrandisement, an avaricious ego ever ready to jostle and elbow his way to the nearest microphone, newspaper headline or television camera. Political obituaries are bemoaning his absence from Government as a dervish-like force for neo-liberalist economics, a skilful parliamentary debater and a never-disappointing source of controversy and colour in the Dáil. Aw shucks.
However, deep in my gut, I have a sneaking suspicion we have not seen the last of our recent Tánaiste and Minister for Justice. His country retreat in Rooskey – the unwanted attentions of careless duck-hunters notwithstanding – will be no replacement for the adrenalin-feed of the public arena that his ego requires. I give it a couple of months before he starts putting the final touches to his comeback concert. For if we know anything about Michael Mc Dowell, we know that he is a political diva – demanding, selfish and ultimately craving the limelight.
So be afraid, but not too afraid, because comebacks of the political kind are diminished affairs and it is pretty hard to make it back without a party.
Meanwhile, let us party on, because as the old song says, “the divil is dead and buried in Killarney” – or in this case, Ranelagh.
