Eoghan Harris: If Cowen can't talk the talk, then he must walk
Sunday September 19 2010
Brian Cowen is in the middle of the journey of his life. Like Dante in Seamus Heaney's version of the Inferno, he finds himself astray in a dark wood, where he has lost sight of the straight road. To find it he will have to figure out where he went wrong.
Be in no doubt that Brian Cowen is in a bad place. Anyone who has been publicly abused -- and I have had some experience in this area -- knows how dark that wood can be. But an added sense of shame sears right into the soul.
As one of his strongest -- sometimes only -- defender in the media, I care about Brian Cowen more than most. I feel profound personal sympathy for him and his family. But unless he is ready to understand what went wrong, and change his whole approach to communication, I want to say this: enough already.
Brian Cowen is in trouble because he won't talk properly to the Irish people. As I pointed out in last week's prescient profile of Dr Anthony O'Halloran: "When he first took office as Taoiseach, Cowen saw communicating as an extra chore. But for O'Halloran, as for me, it's not an addition to the main job -- it is the main job."
The big question is: does Brian Cowen believe that? Does he understand that deeds must be dressed in words? Does he accept the difference between calling someone into an office to say, "I'm sorry, Jim, but the business has fallen on bad times and I must let you go" and leaning out the window to shout "Hey you, f**k off home".
Cowen favours substance over style. Fine up to a point. But has he forgotten the old Irish saying: "Ni he an bochtanas is measa duinn ach an masla a leannan e?" Because what the spalpeens were saying is: "Look landlord, it's not the poverty (substance) that's the worst but the insults that follow it (style)."
By continually stressing substance over style, Brian Cowen is closer to the Cromwellians than the Irish spalpeens. So far he shows no sign of accepting that content and form, substance and style, deeds and words, comprise one seamless robe. And in a war, style is a substance in its own right.
After Dunkirk, Churchill must have worried if he had the substance to stand up to Hitler. So he slaved over style, rewriting and rehearsing the speeches, converting words into weapons. Likewise Pearse's words at the grave of O'Donovan Rossa were as material a force as the antiquated weapons of the Irish Volunteers.
Brian Cowen's failure to face up to modern media was bound to end in tears. Last week he got his final wake-up call. But will he get up and merely go through the motions of handling mass media -- and continue to do it badly because he can't be bothered to learn the rules of rhetoric which help a message reach a mass audience?
After all, if his apology means anything, why does he not respect the Irish people by preparing properly for public appearances? Toil over arguments that appeal to emotion as well as reason? Choose plain words that touch the heart? Junk the jargon that disfigures all his public statements?
Why does he not speak to his country as simply as he does to his wife and children? Why has he not figured out the difference between spin -- which is faking feelings and clothing them in cheap words -- and communication, which is the hard work of digging down to your deepest beliefs? Why has he not found simple formulae to explain complex problems and vibrant words to express inspiring visions?
Maybe he hates dealing with media. If so, he has no business being Taoiseach. The Magnificent Seven dealt in lead: Taoisigh deal in words. So he can't continue to rush through interviews as if they were an irritation, hiding behind a cloak of jargon, and conveying the impression that talking to pesky interviewers is a distraction from his "real" job.
Brian Cowen's "real job" in a recession with resonances of war is to talk us through it while delegating the detail to other functionaries. Contrary to what he thinks, the "real job" is not merely about having meetings with senior civil servant -- it's about having constant meetings with the only major player that can pull us through this recession: the Irish people.
At these meetings he must stop making a case and start to tell us a story, a national narrative. Long ago I told David Trimble that the secret of Sinn Fein's media success was that they spoke like storytellers while the Unionists spoke like solicitors. So far, Brian Cowen has done the same, making cases, clogging our ears with empty jargon.
Maybe he uses business jargon to save thinking. It's easier to reach for a ready-made junk sentence than figure out how to say something in short simple sentences. As Raymond Chandler said: they write them long because they can't write them short.
Above all, Brian Cowen suffers from an addiction. He is addicted to the delusion that what he says is more important than how he says it. But the whole history of modern politics proves this is not true.
As a recovering alcoholic I remember how I reached rock bottom before I could break my addiction. As a jargon addict, Brian Cowen reached rock bottom last week. This is his last chance to start over, to start speaking from the heart, to change how he talks to the Irish people.
In making that change, he needs PR people and spindoctors like he needs more ballad sessions. He already has good speechwriters. But he will not do better in live interviews unless he accepts two principles of communication: (a) that context controls how he is heard; and (b), that when he can't take hard action he has to use hard words.
First, context. Does he accept that the Freefall programme changed the context of what people would take last Tuesday? Does he accept that the public blame the political class for presiding over the abuse of the public purse? And, if so, why does he not eat humble pie, cut his own salary by 20 per cent and demand that all TDs and senators do the same before the next Budget?
Second, hard words. Cowen does not seem willing to act against abusers of the public purse because of his beloved "due process". So before he lets Brian Lenihan loose on the welfare class, the least he might do is go on television and radio and give a good tongue lashing to any fat-cat group which is gorging on the public purse.
Brian Cowen is Taoiseach. The word means leader. Dictators use secret police but democratic leaders have only words. If Cowen can't come up with a story like the Goban Saor and shorten the journey through the dark wood, he should step aside for someone who can.
- Eoghan Harris
Originally published in
