Heroic Bertie rides into the sunset, foes all in disarray
Sunday April 06 2008
ALL political dramas are westerns. Last weekend Bertie Ahern's enemies were planning to finish him off with a high noon -- or high jump. And while I was determined to be the last man standing at his side, I knew he had no hope.
So I watched with heavy heart as he stood, like a little Cuchullainn, circled by enemies, waiting for the end. But then, in a sudden, supreme stroke of strategic genius, he holstered his gun, handed his star to Brian Cowen, and rode into the sunset.
This left the townspeople looking at his media tormentors. Without Ahern in the way they could see what a nasty bunch they were. And under the public's grim gaze the hired guns of the media began to back away, blustering about how Bertie had been a great sheriff.
But my mind was on Bertie Ahern's bit of unfinished business back in town. Maybe he heard my cries of Shane. Because he came back.
I held my breath as he was hailed a hero. Held my breath while he got a standing ovation in UCD for bringing peace to the town. Held my breath while the media threw maudlin arms around him and told him to forget all that Mahon stuff.
And I only let that breath go when Bertie walked out of the hall, smiled at the media, and then shot the guys who gave Grainne Carruth a hard time.
Because a hero avenges a fallen comrade at any cost.
* * *
Bertie Ahern remains my hero because (a) he broke the back of IRA terrorism and (b) because he did not forget to settle scores for Grainne Carruth. In both cases he followed Hegel's principle that freedom is the recognition of necessity. From this principle flowed the three mortal blows he struck against IRA irredentism.
He struck the first blow in 1994 when he took over Fianna Fail. He inherited a pan-nationalist policy which he saw would never produce peace. So he morphed it from a pan-nationalist policy into a pluralist policy, won the undying respect of unionist leaders and found that freedom waited at the other side.
He struck his second blow at Sinn Fein/IRA by securing the Good Friday Agreement -- which meant removing Articles 2 and 3 from the Irish Constitution. As Lord Trimble pointed out in his warm tribute last Wednesday, only Ahern could have taken that "toxic" issue out of Irish affairs and made peace possible.
He struck his last and most lethal blow at IRA terrorism by wiping out Sinn Fein at the general election in 2007. Paradoxically he was helped by Frank Connolly, a radical republican journalist whose anti-Ahern line was supinely followed by most of the Irish media -- so much so that a MediaMarket survey showed that on the day before polling, only four per cent of coverage in the Irish Independent was favourable to Fianna Fail.
But the ferocity of this campaign forced Fianna Fail to close ranks. Sinn Fein was squeezed to a pulp. In sum, Ahern permanently interned the IRA at the general election of 2007.
Now I wish I could claim I sussed out Ahern's strategy from the start. But when he took over Fianna Fail in 1994 I shared the suspicions of many democrats who were afraid that Ahern would be ambivalent about the IRA, just as his master, Haughey, had been in the months before the Arms Trial of 1970.
Against that, I had known Ahern in the Workers Union of Ireland. And I had a hunch that his basic decency and democratic instincts would cause him to reject any plan for pressurising the Prods.
So in the long period of peace processing from 1994-2002 I practised the dialectic -- praising him when he gave Sinn Fein stick and complaining when he gave it too many carrots.
As I watched him, I began to get another hunch about Ahern. That he was not soft on Sinn Fein. And from 2003 onwards, watching him play soft cop to McDowell's hard cop, that hunch hardened.
By 2005 I was sure that behind the benign mask Bertie Ahern disliked and despised Sinn Fein and could be trusted never to take them into government. But my real political epiphany came at the end of September 2006.
At that time the Mahon tribunal was leaking like a sieve. Frank Connolly was stepping up his campaign on Ahern's finances. A general election loomed. I had to make a choice. I came to the firm conclusion that Bertie Ahern would rather cut off his foot with a chainsaw than do business with Sinn Fein.
At the general election of 2007 I nailed my colours to Ahern's mast and for the first time in my life voted the Fianna Fail ticket in the belief that Ahern would (a) annihilate Sinn Fein and (b) refuse to have any remnants in his government.
As Ahern delivered on both counts I do not regret my decision. Alas, some of my former political associates cannot free their minds from the platonic delusion that people and parties have fixed essences. Thus they believe Fianna Fail is essentially evil and that all its leaders are crooked like Charles Haughey.
As an Aristotelian, I do not believe in fixed essences. I believe the character of a person or a party cannot be anticipated and is only revealed in action, in specific struggles between necessity and freedom.
Fianna Fail changes according to circumstance and the courage or cowardice of its leaders. And Brian Cowen has courage. Far from being blindly loyal to Ahern, Cowen showed he had perfect moral vision by weighing Ahern's achievements against his minor flaws and finding him worthy of loyalty to the last.
Cowen will have the luck of that loyalty.
* * *
Finally, why did Ahern delay coming to Grainne Carruth's defence? Because if he spoke out at the time he would be portrayed as making political capital from her suffering. Ahern was always very angry, however, about how she was browbeaten.
And if the media had reported Mahon without bias, you would have been angry too. Because when Grainne Carruth asked to be allowed to finish her testimony on Wednesday afternoon (she had three children on a mid-term break and no child minder), the tribunal turned her down. Why? Surely the tribunal could see that calling her back on Holy Thursday would meet the media's need for a "cliffhanger" and feed its fevered speculations about whether she would "crack next day?" All this Ahern laid at the tribunal's door.
So he bided his time. And when he was riding high, and the anoraks had lowered their guard a little, and when it was not in his interest to wake sleeping dogs, he said what the hell, and let Mahon have both barrels. And I hope he re-loads.
* * *
Last week Bertie Ahern gave the lie to Enoch Powell's aphorism about all political careers ending in failure. He did so by acting on Hegel's aphorism that freedom is the recognition of necessity.
So instead of waiting for the inevitable push, Ahern jumped. With that one bound, our hero was free. Heroes, however, do not leave women in the lurch.
So, while I had no tears when he rode away, I wept hard when he came back for Grainne. That's what I call a hero.
