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• Reshuffling personalities

  March 25, 2010 @ 4:00 pm | by Bryan

  

  Appointments of Ministers: (front seated) Pat Moylan, Séamus Kirk, Mr John Murray, Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan; (Back row) Éamon Ó Cuív, Mary Hanafin, Batt O’Keeffe, Pat Carey, Tony Killeen and John Curran. Photograph: Cyril Byrne.

  I have been trying to make sense of the latest cabinet reshuffle and the response to it. To begin with, the response. From Stephen Collins’ excellent report:

  According to Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny – “The Taoiseach has retreated from the challenge of leadership that fell upon his shoulders. He could have been courageous, taken a different approach and from among those on his own backbenches he could have reshuffled his Cabinet so that it would bring some semblance of life to an exhausted group who are fatigued and flattened. They are without ideas, energy, ideals or commitment.”
  Translation, I don’t like the people Brian Cowen picked?

  Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore – “Why is the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, still in office? By any standards, she should be removed from office. While I acknowledge she has been a good Minister in other departments and has made a major contribution to public life, her record as Minister for Health and Children has been hopeless.”
  In other words, I really don’t like one of the people Cowen picked?

  Last but not least, Green Party leader, John Gormley – the appointment of two of his party’s TDs as junior ministers represented a “very successful day for the Greens in Government”.
  That is, I’m delighted that two of my people got picked?

  And then there’s the reshuffle itself. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the guiding principle was ensuring stability, and that by rewarding allies, pacifying wavering partners, and only moving things around so long as doing so did not get in the way of the rewarding and pacifying.

  Is it just me, or do the political leaders all seem to be far more interested in who gets political power than with what gets done with that power? Even the Greens, who probably have the clearest political agenda of the lot, seem more concerned with staying in power than with realising their vision, as if that vision could not possibly be realised without their presence in government. It is easy to pick on the Greens, but I can’t help but feel that everyone else is the same. Had the Taoiseach sacked half of his cabinet, or the whole lot, and replaced them with the most promising and articulate deputies from every party, I’m sure he would have been hailed as a genius. But would that really have been any different from the action he took? Sure, it would have meant spreading the political power around like a good democrat, but what good does it do the country in the long run if the distribution of power is effected for the sake of popularity, legacy or just good naturedness rather than for personal political survival? Isn’t the real issue the socio-economic transformation of the state?

  What I found really sad about the reshuffle and then the terms in which it has been subsequently analysed is that apart from the fuzzy, non-specific talk of innovation and economic recovery, there hadn’t been much in the way of articulating a comprehensive vision for the future. Not by government, nor the opposition. The discussion has been something like discussing the merits of a new football signing without any reference to team he has joined, long term goals, their style of play, their likely position at the end of the season, the competitions in which they will be involved, and so forth.

  I think it’s really sad that whether a politician is a good media performer, is articulate in the Dáil, is liked or otherwise, comes from such and such a part of the country, and so forth, that these things set the parameters of the discussion on political appointments as opposed to questions around where the country is going.

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• Why isn’t George Lee a hero?

  February 9, 2010 @ 10:25 pm | by Bryan

  

  George Lee speaking outside Leinster House yesterday, following his resignation from both the Dáil and Fine Gael. Photograph: Eric Luke.

  It pains me to think of myself as jumping onto the George Lee bandwagon, but jump on it I shall. Actually, I’m not really jumping on the bandwagon. I don’t have very much to add to the matter in terms of socio-political analysis or insight. All I have is a question. Simply, why isn’t the guy a hero?

  The ‘I went into politics to serve my country/so that I could look my grandkids in the eye’ was a bit much. It sounded like a politician doing what just about all politicians do – trying to look better than they really are. And let’s face it, a celebrity economist is no more likely to know how to sort out the country’s economic difficulties than all the other economists advising and working within the political process. In that respect, I can understand why so many people feel that Lee should have behaved like other elected officials and just got on with the job he signed up for, regardless of how difficult it may have been to get his ideas across.

  Still, here is an individual who, having spent less than a year on the job, has decided that the main opposition party just isn’t serious, and is walking away. Call it throwing toys out of a cot if you want, but I’m really impressed. Non-compliance with systems and institutions that don’t work is, in my opinion, very definitely the way to go. Which is why I’m confused. The average person distrusts most politicians, the political establishment and its culture. Yet when a George Lee rejects that culture, when he decides that it is better to walk away from it all than to continue to legitimate it, to perpetuate the idea that the slogans, speeches and images that go around at election time bear any resemblance to the reality of post-election political life, he is accused of being a mollycoddled, cowardly civil servant. All of a sudden, the status quo politicians are rugged, powerful, stouthearted Greek gods, while Lee and others of his ilk, most notably (for some reason) civil servants, are pathetic specimens who don’t belong anywhere near the reigns of public office.

  In Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky suggests that a rough environment will produce a rough political class because only they will be able to survive and hang around long enough to make it to the top. That’s not to imply that Ireland necessarily has a ‘rough’ political climate, but it obviously has one which is not conducive to the likes of Lee. And maybe that explains why so many incredibly able people here shun politics as a profession.

  Which brings me back to my initial question: why isn’t Lee a hero? Why, at the very least, isn’t the country panicked? If his election in any way represented a desire to see capable people from outside the political class given the opportunity to help sort out the country, why isn’t his failure to do that ominous? Doesn’t it mean that only the sort of person who can accommodate or tolerate the political system as it currently stands can hold elected office for any significant period of time?

  Turning on Lee, from where I stand, looks like an endorsement by the ruled, of the idea that they don’t belong in their rulers’ courts.

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• Obama a year on

  January 21, 2010 @ 5:09 pm | by Bryan

  

  A year ago I wrote the following:

  …I think Obama’s role is largely symbolic … I think the biggest ‘thing’ he gives his nation and the rest of the world is a sense of hope and possibility. Having lived in places where hope literally sustains people, I would be the last person to belittle the importance of that quality… Tied in to that hope, I think he inspires people to strive for more and better. Again, you can’t quantify the importance of that. But even I, an unashamed Obama fan, have begun to feel that the level of expectation on him in some quarters has gone way beyond the ridiculous.

  It has only been twelve months, but things have changed dramatically. I’m not an Obama fan anymore, and I certainly don’t think that he inspires universal hope. As for ‘Yes We Can’, I personally feel betrayed.

  Why betrayed? Barack Obama ran as more than just a ‘change candidate’. He ran as a man who wanted to ‘transcend politics’; an ordinary human being in high political office. The idea was that the political process in the United States would be simplified, and ordinary people would get to dictate to government and the political establishment, not the other way around – government of the people, for the people, and all of that. I think that’s what galvanised so many people: the idea that the masses would get to call the shots. That of course, hasn’t happened.

  The example that most stands out is the so-called healthcare debate. Even before the ‘debate’ was opened to people, a settlement was supposedly reached with the health insurance industry. A pragmatic move? Maybe, but to then characterise the so-called healthcare reform as a means of ‘sticking it to the man’ was deceitful. And having begun with the health insurance industry in mind, is it any wonder that word of bill being successfully passed resulted in stock-market gains for those same companies? Worst of all, the closest that the public – the ‘we’ in ‘Yes We Can’ – came to a crafting their own healthcare legislation, was being campaigned to by politicians with their own ideas about how to go about things. Not exactly rule of and for the people.

  According to today’s editorial:
  The constant management of expectations, the brokering of compromise after compromise in Congress over health, the recommitment to the war in Afghanistan, the deferral of action on jobs while bankers were “rescued”, and delays in closing Guantánamo, have contributed to [President Obama’s] gradual alienation from his Democratic base.

  True, but more than those things, I think it is the feeling that though he may be a decent man with good intentions, the president is still at heart a politician in the mould of other politicians. His decine in popularity has to do with the fact that there will be no earthshaking change under his tenure, that as things stand, really, ‘we can’t’.

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• Di-Aping, climate change and the Holocaust

  December 21, 2009 @ 8:28 am | by Bryan

  

  [The Copenhagen Accord] asks Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. It is a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces. – Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping (Chief negotiator for the G77 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen).

  You’ve got to hand it to the Sudanese chair of the G77. Europe is still pretty touchy about the holocaust, and the suggestion that the continent is helping to get the gas chambers cranked up was always going to evoke a response. Di-Aping knows how to make headline grabbing statements, but is there any substance to his charge?

  First of all, there’s the suicide pact stuff. On that, I’m with Di-Aping. The smaller countries don’t really get much consideration (and that’s me trying to be as generous as possible to the rich and powerful ones). Barack Obama didn’t take Malawi, Bangladeshi, a couple of Pacific Island nations and Paraguay into a private room to discuss their grievances. Part of that is Malawi et. al. aren’t responsible for much of the greenhouse gases the world produces so they can’t be expected to be at the forefront of a new green revolution. That said, because they aren’t very well off and don’t have much political clout, the views of Malawi et. al. aren’t going to be seriously considered. Let’s face it, Greenpeace have a better chance of getting a hearing from the Obama administration on the effects of climate change than Malawi. I’m not the only one who thinks as much. According to Michael Levi of the Council for Foreign Relations, “The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere.” “That elsewhere,” speculates the New York Times, “will likely be a much smaller group of nations, roughly 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions,” i.e. the 30 most powerful nations. As for the weak, heard of Darwin?

  Then there’s the values stuff. What values led to the holocaust? I’m no expert in this area. On some level, ‘The Pearl’ must be right – there was money to be made in the exploitation and murder of millions of innocents. More interesting philosophical and sociological explanations have been put forward, but when all is said and done, most come down to the fact that we (people) like situations that work to our favour, especially if the consequences (or victims) are safely out of sight. The structure of the global political economy, for example, is such that I can easily afford to buy a cup of coffee most mornings, while the farmer who grew and harvested that coffee might struggle to feed her family. The distance between us allows me to sleep peacefully at night.

  So maybe Di-Aping is right on both counts. Maybe the small and vulnerable will continue to pay the price for the short-sightedness of the rich and powerful so long as ‘the dollar bill’ lies at the centre of our global value system.

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• The role of the mainstream in curbing the extreme

  October 22, 2009 @ 10:29 am | by Bryan

  According to David Adams, the focus on whether the BBC should host the far right British National Party’s (BNP) Nick Griffin, is neither here nor there. Leaders of mainstream political parties need to confront the BNP head on and tackle issues from which they have previously shied away. Issues like immigration reform.

  Gary Younge takes this line of thinking even further. He claims that we have New Labour to thank for Griffin’s scheduled appearance this evening. As far as Younge is concerned:

  Economically, its neoliberal policies have resulted in growing insecurity, rising unemployment, child poverty and inequality that have alienated the poor and made the middle class feel vulnerable. Politically, its lies over the war, stewardship of the expenses scandal and internal bickering have produced widespread cynicism with our political culture. The ramifications of its role in the war on terror in general, and Iraq in particular, were to elevate fear of a racialised “other” to a matter of life and death at home … Meanwhile New Labour’s race-baiting rhetoric gave the state’s imprimatur to the notion that Britain’s racial problems were not caused by racism but the existence of non-white, non-Christian and non-British people … Having inflated racism’s political currency, New Labour vacated the electoral market so that others with a more ostentatious style might more freely spend it. Once they had made these ideas respectable it was only a matter of time before a party reached a position where it too would earn sufficient respectability to appear on prime time. (More…)

  The problems highlighted by Adams also apply to Ireland. Presumably in order to avoid any slip ups that could see one labelled a racist, Ireland’s mainstream political establishment has kept as far as possible from meaningful debate on immigration and race. What Ireland has had, to its credit, is a variety of non-racist social and political groups which represent the interests of the indigenous poor and middle classes. Maybe that is why there isn’t an Irish BNP.

  Then again, it could also have to do with the fact that the non-white segment of the Irish population does not yet feel entirely secure. Once properly ‘integrated’ and with a sense of entitlement to a just slice of the national pie, who knows? A sufficiently large segment of the indigenous population might feel sufficiently threatened by some of their fellow citizens to give rise to a BNP-like entity.

  In any case, how Britain responds to Griffin and those like him will be instructive.

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• My local TD

  September 29, 2009 @ 1:50 pm | by Bryan

  I must confess that until now, I’ve had mixed feelings about the dual role of the Irish TD – national lawmaker and local issue handyman. I would never have gone as far as Peter Sutherland, who recently described local politicians as being ‘too parochial’. That said, I’ve had plenty of sympathy for those who believe that national politicians should focus solely on national politics and leave fixing streetlights to local representatives.

  Recently however, I was confronted with an issue that I felt I couldn’t resolve on my own. My local TD’s office is on my street (I live in the middle of town), and on my way home one day, I noticed that his clinic was open. On the spur of the moment, I decided to go in and see what would happen.

  Maybe that in itself is problematic. Maybe elected representatives shouldn’t have to deal with whatever issues their constituents impulsively decide to dump onto them. That said, I had a problem (and not even a communal one like a broken streetlight or pothole), I felt an important person like a TD could successfully intercede on my behalf, and as it turned out, he was willing to try. My issue was quickly resolved. I’m not sure how much of that was the result of my TD’s intervention, but I’ve been converted. Accessible, down-to-earth national politicians who are intimately acquainted with the difficulties of their constituents can only contribute positively to a healthy political system. I think.

  I’m torn. On the one hand, I frequently ask those who know about the Irish political system how a cabinet minister who shall remain nameless got re-elected the last time the country went to the polls. That minister’s department is frequently criticised, as is the minister in question. If this minister is as attentive to the needs of their constituents as my TD, my question has at last been definitively answered. Only, if said minister deserves the criticism that is hurled at them, then maybe accessibility isn’t always good for the political system.

  How do you square those two interests – the individual’s interests and those of the whole? Is the functioning of the political system not too different from the economic one? Does efficiency have to give way at times, to some of our higher values? Is having a few bad cabinet ministers a price that we must pay for a system that allows us to be governed by people who regularly interact with, and serve us, in some very mundane ways?

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• Hooray for the G20?

  September 25, 2009 @ 1:50 pm | by Bryan

  

  “The fact that 20 or so individuals right now are determining economic trade policies for four to five billion people just isn’t right,” Mr. Griffith said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  Most news organisations are making a big deal over the fact that the G8 is being replaced by the G20. The fact that a handful of the most powerful ‘developing nations’ are being added to the elite club that gets to set the economic rules for the rest is supposed to represent the dawn of a new inclusive era or something. It does no such thing.

  Let’s take a look at some of these ‘developing nations’. China. India. South Africa. Turkey. Brazil. These aren’t exactly the nations that I would pick were I trying to get a good understanding of the concerns of the typical state in the South. China is China. India, while being home to some of the world’s poorest people, is also incredibly wealthy. So much so, the Indians not only sent a rocket to the moon, they were also the ones who recently discovered water there. They’re not exactly Malawi or Haiti – nations trying to come up with a formula for growing enough food to meet domestic needs. As for Brazil, the OECD has been trying to woo them for a while. The OECD, you may have noticed, have not expressed much interest in Cuba or Paraguayi. The G20 is so inclusive that neither Nigeria nor Egypt, Africa’s second and third wealthiest nations, were deemed worthy. And yet, just about all of Europe is represented there by the EU. But just to make sure, France, Germany, Italy and Britain get their own special seats. The same is true of North America – the US, Canada and Mexico are all members.

  So just to re-cap, the G20 is made up of Europe, North America, and everyone else with too much economic clout to ignore. And what happens when only the powerful get to make the rules? Let’s look at the response to the recent financial crisis, shall we? As was recently demonstrated on the excellent three part BBC television series, The Love of Money, the politically powerful got together with the economically powerful to craft a solution to the crisis. Unsurprisingly, it was decided that to avoid catastrophe, the economically powerful could not be allowed to fail. Equally unsurprisingly, the chosen mechanism of their rescue was a transfer of wealth from the rest, to those deemed to large to fail. Could it be that the proposal to transfer wealth to struggling mortgage holders instead of, or in tandem with the banks bailout, would have got more of a hearing were struggling mortgage holders part of the deliberations? Hoping that China, Brazil or even South Africa will represent Malawi’s economic interests is like expecting AIB or Bank of Ireland to ask the Finance Minister to consider my local credit union’s needs, and give some of the taxpayer money allocated to the banks to St. Anthony’s Credit Union instead. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  Like Trevor Griffith, I have serious problems with a small group from the most powerful nations making potentially life and death decisions for the rest of the planet. If however, that’s the direction the world is going to take, then at least let’s be completely honest about it and get rid of the charade that is the United Nations General Assembly. Maybe let’s get rid of the UN altogether? It can’t be that important if the real decision makers use it as a pit stop en-route to G20 meetings.

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• Determining the parameters of the debate

  August 17, 2009 @ 8:14 pm | by Bryan

  Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein wrote an excellent article for BusinessWeek titled ‘The Health Insurers Have Already Won’. Here is an excerpt:

  As the health reform fight shifts this month from a vacationing Washington to congressional districts and local airwaves around the country, much more of the battle than most people realize is already over. The likely victors are insurance giants … [They] have succeeded in redefining the terms of the reform debate to such a degree that no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable.

  Terhune and Epstein’s article reminded me of the cover story on Goldman Sachs that appeared in the New York Magazine a few weeks ago. This dealt with the investment bank’s influence over the US government. A lot of people in senior government positions are alumni of the bank. That has raised questions about the legitimacy of Goldman’s influence over public policy.

  All of that got me thinking about Ireland’s banking crisis. This is a small country. It is hard to believe that the people running government, the opposition, banks, trade unions, and big business (including developers) don’t know each other. It seems reasonable to expect there to be a web of relationships – be that as a result of having attended the same schools and universities, or just because there aren’t that many things to do and places to go for the rich and powerful in a small country. When something then happens that necessitates some degree of public debate, to what extent are the parameters of that debate predetermined by those relationships?

  Take NAMA for example, Ireland’s proposed bad bank. It has been argued that its existence favours the very people who contributed most to the downturn. Were the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) running the country, it is more likely that there would be a bailout of people struggling to pay their mortgages, and maybe businesses in the same position, than a bailout of bankers and property developers. And if there was to be some shoring up of the banking system, the SVP would probably recapitalise the credit union system before AIB and BOI.

  The general consensus is probably that NAMA is more likely to improve the country’s long-term prospects than my imaginary SVP proposal. But how much of that has to do with the manner in which public consensus is formed as opposed to the merits of the ideas? Are we immune to the US health care reform phenomenon, where vested interests frame the debate?

  According to the father of neoliberalism, Friedrich von Hayek, “what to the contemporary observer appears as a battle of con?icting interests decided by the vote of the masses, has usually been decided long before in a battle of ideas con?ned to narrow circles.” On this point, I think Hayek was right.

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• Alternatives

  June 26, 2009 @ 10:46 am | by Bryan

  Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa blamed capitalism for the global economic mess. No surprise there. Left leaning leaders of Latin American countries have a tendency to say that sort of thing. Capitalism is a problem. White guys with blue eyes created the recession. We’ve heard it all before.

  That said, Correa and some of his colleagues went a step further. According to Reuters,

  “Patching up the Bretton Woods system, which we do not control, makes no sense for (developing) countries,” Correa said in a speech on the second day of the conference.
  Reforming the IMF and World Bank “would be an insufficient stopgap solution,” he said, adding that “we are faced with a crisis unlike those (previously) provoked by capitalism.”
  If the Bretton Woods institutions cannot be abolished, he said, then they should be changed and given less authority over the world’s poor countries. More financial decision-making power, Correa said, should go to the United Nations instead.

  That’s more potent than your run of the mill ‘capitalism is bad’ statement. Yet even this rather more radical stance is not new. From about the 50s onwards, the developing world has been trying to fight the ‘establishment’ view on development, and the rules of global financial and economic governance. There have been a plethora of statements, pledges, plans and even alternative organisations set up to combat the influence of the Western dominated Bretton Woods institutions. But the outcome is always the same.

  Again, according to Reuters,

  The final proposals, watered down from an initial draft that was prepared by [UN General Assembly President and former Nicaragua foreign minister] D’Escoto and rejected by Western powers as too radical, include a call for reforming the IMF.
  But the only specific reform they call for is that the decision-making power of emerging market and developing states be increased in the next IMF quota review by early 2011.

  Sometimes I wonder why the likes of D’Escoto bother. At best, these measures get some lip service while nothing really changes. More often than not, they are just ignored and treated with contempt. Which begs the question, is it possible to offer a development paradigm that is antithetical to that of the IMF and World Bank? What more have it adopted and allowed to succeed?

  Are real alternatives, real departures to the status quo, possible? Or is the best that someone like D’Escoto can hope for a haggling session that ends with a statement of the intent to give up, at some undisclosed occasion in the future, a few crumbs?

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• Blah blah blah

  June 9, 2009 @ 2:34 pm | by Bryan

  The strangest thing happened to me last night as I was watching Questions and Answers on TV. As senior members of the main political parties discussed the election results, all I could hear was, “Blah, blah blah, blah realignment, blah blah, blah general election, blah blah.

  ”It was the strangest thing. I’m a self-confessed political junkie. Questions and Answers is my favourite current affairs programme on Irish television. I should have been glued to the screen, forming all sorts of opinions and maybe even deciding on what to blog, or write about next. Instead, halfway through the show I pressed the mute button and started doing something else.

  I’ve been called a cynic a few times but I don’t think that was the cause of my temporary hearing impairment. It couldn’t have been politics fatigue because I’m pretty sure I’ve still got an appetite for it. I think I’m just tired of being lied to and watching a bunch of actors pretend to be engaging in an important discussion. I think that’s it.

  Sometime ago, at a networking event for journalists, I asked a veteran of the profession if the media was to blame for turning politics into theatre. He had just been justifying Declan Ganley’s media coverage with the often repeated ‘he’s a fantastic media performer’. His response was that the media chases entertaining stories and at the end of the day, it’s up to politicians to come up with ‘entertaining’ gimmicks if they want to be covered.

  Because both the political and the media establishment have come to terms with this ‘fact’, there is almost no point watching politicians on TV. Their aim isn’t to intelligently address the matter at hand. It is to put in a good media performance. The better the performance, the more likely you and I are to think they know what they are talking about. And if we think they know what they are talking about, there’s a good chance we’ll elect them. That’s at least partially why George Lee (with the greatest respect to Mr. Lee), and not some unknown economist (like Terrence McDonough at the NUIG) stood in and won a by-election.

  And what does a good television performance look like? A little aggression. Sticking to a few well prepared talking points regardless of the questions put forward. Understanding that a response does not have to be related in any way to the preceding question or even the matter being discussed. Interrupting everyone else. Aggressive interruptions work especially well. And in this department, there is a certain minister for justice who is unmatched. Which makes plenty of media sense. Who doesn’t want Judge Dred to be the minister ensuring their safety. If you don’t look and sound like Sly Stallone, the next best thing for a justice minister is to be the guy you least want to meet in a dark alley.

  And on it goes. The point is, at some point last night, it hit me. I’m watching this show to get a better understanding of the country’s political landscape. But the only thing I’m going to get from it is an idea of who may have a shot of becoming the next great soap star. If they’re really good … Taoiseach?

  I really need to read Brave New World again.

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