COVERING ELECTIONS does strange things to your brain. You start to notice odd things and wonder about them. It’s like a dream to me, for instance, that Seán Gallagher used to have a completely shaved pate, like Kojak or Errol Brown, but now he’s got a “standard bald man” look with a modest growth of hair showing around the back of his head. It’s the kind of election when you start to wonder about things like that.
Having scooped the younger, trendier vote, is he now goin’ for the poor ould fellas? Or is it just that he hasn’t had time recently for an audience with a razor?
Surveying the faces of six of the presidential candidates (Dana is missing in action) behind a table in the Oak Room of the Mansion House, I decide it’s probably the latter. We’re into the final 10 days and the strain is beginning to show. It’s a Monday morning and the candidates are taking part in an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the disability support group Inclusion Ireland. Chaired by Miriam O’Callaghan, it’s not quite a debate, rather a reeling off of positions on disability issues.
Lined up behind the table, the six look like a backline covering their goal to protect a slender lead in the dying minutes. Except that these six are supposed to be competing, and most of them have no leads to protect. Apart from the odd sideswipe, there is negligible interaction. Nobody scored any vital points, but then nobody was really trying to.
Gallagher probably came off best, because of his capacity to invigorate the disability issue with personal experience. He spoke about his own sight impairment, about the teachers who wrote him off. “Last week, that little guy handed in his nomination papers to run to become president of this great country.” It should have sounded cheesy, but it actually packed quite a punch. There’s something about Gallagher’s personality that allows for an exceptional range of expression, from pathos to irony, without him going much out of tune.
“I can’t see any of your faces,” he tells his audience in the Oak Room, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t live my life. I’ve taken on the challenge of ‘can’t’ all my life. As president I will be the living embodiment of what I want to do.”
But it’s actually the story of his brother-in-law Kevin that steals him the show. Kev, he says, has Down’s syndrome, but works in a supermarket, which gives him financial independence, stimulus, and friends. The benefits extend beyond Kev – to his family, his mother, his sister Trish (Gallagher’s wife), to the community – all being buoyed up by a sense of Kev’s independence.
Some of his opponents either go all folksy (Norris) or overly abstract (Michael D), but Gallagher gets the balance right and has a nice turn of phrase which achieves memorability without apparent affectation. Perhaps his sight impairment enabled him to develop what is a rare gift for moving from word-pictures to abstract ideas in simple but effective sweeps: from the image of Kev at the check-out to the principle that a society that looks after its weakest is happier all round.
It is difficult to say what Gallagher’s “secret” might be – if indeed he has one. An election of the present type is more like a drama than a contest of ideas: we, the jury, make up our minds more on the basis of stories than facts, although we subsequently seek out facts with which to back up our intuitions. Gallagher has the advantage here, because of his restricted back story. As the newcomer, he has a relatively uncluttered frame to present himself in.
He also has that capacity first identified with Mary Robinson, of being able to appeal to different factions in different carriages of the same train. He is an ordinary Joe and also a kind of low-key master of the universe, both Democracy Now and unreconstructed Fianna Fáil. Even though everyone seems to know who’s in the other carriages, nobody seems to mind.
He is rarely if ever caught short for an answer and seems to hit a true note with almost everyone he meets. There is something chameleonic about him, a quasi-instinctual instinct for the personality of the other. He throws out opening gambits – “What sort of an accent is that?” – but seems to have an instantaneous facility to pull back if necessary and change course.
On a canvass of Baggot Street, he meets a couple of men in working clothes. “Are ye gettin’ a bit of work, lads?” he asks and immediately they gather around him and tell him how bad things are. “Tryin to get paid?” he rejoins with appropriate melancholy and a clearly heartfelt sympathy.
His usual opener is “What’s your first name?” He always introduces himself with “I’m Seán”, as though it is understood that everyone knows who he is. And almost everyone does, apart from one woman who squeezes a “Seán Gallagher” out of him. “We have several Seán Gallaghers on Raglan Road,” she says. Another elderly woman tells him the other candidates are too old, so he’ll be getting her vote.
Outside a cafe a man introduces himself as having been a contestant on Dragon's Den. His name is Eddie. He was the guy who invented the covered-in clothesline. Seán tells him that he was one of the most creative and inventive people they'd had on the show. Eddie says that's great but he'd rather have got the money.
A young woman called Siobhán says she would vote for a president “who smiles”. Seán says that he’s the man for the smiling. He delivers a short speech: “Irish people are renowned all over the world for the warmth of their personality. I would like to reflect that.” He places an avuncular hand on her shoulder. “You go and let that percolate down into our psyche,” he says.
Gallagher is about the only one of the seven candidates who could get away with using a word like “psyche” out on the street. From any of the others it would sound either ridiculous or stand as a barrier to further communication. But Gallagher’s personality is such that he can say such things and trust that they will acquire just the right amount of irony on departing his lips.
The Dragon's Denthing appears to be working for him, but not in some crude "I'm-a-celebrity-put-me-in" kind of way. It's as though a relationship has already been established. People feel themselves to know him and like him as someone who talks sense and has a capacity for empathy. Everyone understands he's a politician looking for votes, but there is none of the usual static that goes with such transactions these days.
Just below Tesco we run into PJ Mara. I’ve had this half-formed question in my mind for several weeks: did Mara dream Gallagher up as a way of saving Fianna Fáil, a Trojan horse out of which to unpack a reinvented Soldiers of Destiny for a new generation?
I get my answer from the mutual wariness visible between the two men. Gallagher makes an awkward joke about hoping there are no cameras. They briefly greet one another but then I go and spoil it by half-jokingly asking PJ if Gallagher was all his idea. I’m the only one who thinks it funny. Mara runs away and Gallagher looks like I’ve suddenly become invisible.
Whatever else he is, Seán Gallagher is not an FF cunning plan.