Ahern era was about peace, prosperity and progress
The former Taoiseach's greatest skill was his ability to build partnerships, writes Richard Aldous
Sunday November 09 2008
'THE credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena," said US president Theodore Roosevelt, "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."
Those of us sitting on the sidelines remain fascinated by the spectacle. Last week a whopping 600,000 people tuned in on Monday night to watch the first part of RTE's post-match analysis on Bertie Ahern. As the dust from his time in the arena begins to settle, it is clear that history will regard him as one of Ireland's most outstanding leaders.
Inevitably the ongoing Mahon Tribunal is slowing the process of Ahern passing from politics into history. Perhaps the media can hardly be blamed for focusing on something that remains so current before leaving Ahern to historians. But when that history is written, the tribunal will not be central to it. In fact it will take two paragraphs.
The first will be to recount the part the inquiry played in the downfall of a Taoiseach. The second paragraph will be to wonder at the democratic deficit involved in that process. Here was a Taoiseach who had been re-elected by the people for a third term less than a year earlier. By the time he resigned, his position had been made untenable by the failure of a decade-long tribunal to deliver a verdict one way or the other. That inquiry was established to re-establish confidence in public life. History will record it did the exact opposite.
The first episode of RTE's documentary, directed by Steve Carson, allowed us to glimpse what the verdict of history might be on Ahern.
His personal journey remains compelling. Though the story of this aspirational "working class boy made good" is familiar, seeing film footage of the young Bertie reminds us of an extraordinary ascent. This is "the man from nowhere" (the title of episode one) who went on to lead the country without ever really leaving Drumcondra.
Even more remarkable is the revelation that Mr Ahern was present in the crowd on the night that the British embassy burnt down in the wake of Bloody Sunday. In other circumstances, Mr Ahern admitted, he might have been an IRA man. A quarter of a century later he helped bring the Troubles to an end. Put in the context of Ahern's father in the old IRA, that trajectory personifies the journey of a distinctive brand of Republicanism from the War of Independence to the Good Friday peace settlement.
It is often said that Mr Ahern was lucky that he became Taoiseach just as the Celtic Tiger began to roar (and to get out before it was shot dead). That may be true, but good timing is a political skill in itself. Certainly it should not deflect from Ahern's immense personal contribution. Now the Ahern era has come to an end, we can begin to see the broader picture of what "Bertie-ism" actually was. That can be summed up in one word: partnership.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Minister for Labour, Ahern pioneered a new Fianna Fail approach to industrial relations that saw him literally roll up his sleeves to hammer out agreements with unions. Progress, he believed could be better achieved through partnership than conflict. When he became Taoiseach in 1997, he brought that philosophy with him, and applied it across the board. The results were spectacular, not least in Northern Ireland. This included the cultivation of strong personal relationships. He talked endlessly about football (the social lubricant of these islands) with Tony Blair. With Ian Paisley he talked religion and history. With both he established a bond that brought progress by using the personal to nudge along the political.
Northern Ireland was the most dramatic achievement of Ahern's partnership philosophy, but it was not the only one. A decade of prosperity was underwritten by carefully husbanded social partnership agreements. A conservative, monocultural, emigration society was transformed without conflict into one that was progressive, multicultural and open. Ahern's internationally acclaimed EU presidency skillfully rebuilt European harmony after the catastrophic humiliations of the previous six months under the Italians. The EU-US summit at Dromoland reaffirmed the strength and depth of a transatlantic partnership tested to breaking point by the war in Iraq. Two coalition governments, by their nature unstable, were coaxed along to full terms. Fianna Fail, a party at war with itself before Ahern, became a united and disciplined force.
Certainly there were stumbles and failures along the way, not least with regard to the property bubble. But compare Ahern's record to the previous two decades -- economic instability, industrial unrest, culture wars, violence in the North, party factionalism, fractious coalitions -- and the success of his partnership strategy speaks for itself.
The rigour that accompanied this was also present early on. In the week it was, it is hard to avoid the obvious parallel with Barack Obama. The president-elect's campaign was marked by a phenomenal ground operation and airtight discipline. It was also dominated by the candidate's cool, even temperament. Ahern's operation in Dublin Central ran on similar lines, with an emphasis on personal loyalty, boots on the ground, and a regimented campaign that presented a youthful, progressive candidate pitted against the party establishment (represented by George Colley). Ahern translated that order into government, running the most stable coalition in the history of the state.
Ahern's temperament mattered. Like Obama, his "highs were never too high, his lows never too low". Until his very last days in office, when the tribunal weighed him down, Ahern always seemed the same whatever was happening around him. His cheerful optimism captured the spirit of the age. That breeziness is a characteristic often shared by successful leaders, from Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to Ahern's partner in peace, Tony Blair.
So too is a certain unknowability. Ahern's daughter, Cecilia, who clearly adores her father, tells us in episode two of Carson's documentary that sometimes she'd think her father had really opened up to her, only to realise he had said nothing at all.
Clearly there are depths to Ahern that no-one sees. But that is often a pre-requisite of strong leadership. We want our leaders to be approachable but we don't want them to be ordinary.
Understanding de Valera was "like trying to pick up mercury with a fork". FDR was like "catching a shaft of sunlight". It did not stop each, like Ahern, from winning re-election time and again.
Three election victories put Ahern alongside de Valera as the most successful politician in the history of the State. His legacy will only slowly be understood. History will record the Ahern era as a time of peace, prosperity and progress, whose defining philosophy was that national advancement comes through partnership. As always, that legacy will be flawed. But as Teddy Roosevelt reminds us, in the arena the credit goes to the man who succeeds or fails "while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat".
Professor Richard Aldous is Head of History & Archives at UCD. His bestselling 'Great Irish Speeches' (Quercus) is now available in a new book and CD
