Taoiseach touches down in style
He's not a man for pomp or rhetoric, but last night Brian Cowen truly found the words, says Eoghan Harris
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GEORGE Hook, on a high, put it up to Brian Cowen after that hard game in Croke Park. Could he deliver like Brian O'Driscoll?
George, he got his answer when the Taoiseach delivered in O'Driscoll style -- from the heart, putting his head down and going straight for the line.
This was a deceptive speech, free of drum rolls and drama. No flowery rhetoric, no Obama flights of high fancy, no feel-good flattery. Just the truth, the hard truth and nothing but the hard truth. And that was why it worked so well.
Hang a lantern on your problem say the smart spindoctors. Brian Cowen's first task was the banks -- or rather the media's morbid focus on a few delinquent bank chiefs.
He began by evicting that elephant from the room: they would be dealt with by the fraud squad, the corporate enforcers and a new central banking commission headed by a Eliot Ness-type regulator of international repute
That out of the way, the Taoiseach talked about the way things were. He did not play down the depression. He did not get defensive. He did not bluster. He spoke in steady, simple, short sentences.
It was like getting a diagnosis from a good doctor -- no bromides, just what's wrong and what we do about it.
From first to last, he never lost the attention of his absorbed audience at home or at the Ard Fheis -- so intent in Citywest that they only remembered to applaud at long intervals. Bad speeches are full of bluster and bring people to their feet to fill the holes. Good speeches have no holes: we listen to them because we want to learn stuff.
Clearly Brian Cowen had three aims -- to banish the wicked bankers, to diagnose what had to be done, and to convince us we could do it. And his speech achieved each of these aims for two simple reasons.
First, while he spoke from the heart he made sure to speak to our head. This is no time for rubbery rhetoric. In a time of crisis, we listen to our leaders with the same attention as we listen to an airline steward telling us to brace ourselves for serious turbulence. And because he seemed sure of himself, it helped calm the national nerves.
Second, it showed us the best side of Brian Cowen. For the first time since he became Taoiseach he came across as he really is -- a decent man who despises posturing and pretention, the kind of gruff but basically gentle person whom you know to be a good father.
And when he called Ireland "her" you felt he saw Ireland as a much-loved daughter whom he loved a lot and wanted to do well, but sometimes failed to find the words to say what was on his mind. Last night he found the words.
