OUTSIDE POLITICS:All politicians have 'the bug', which makes it hard to get used to being outside the game, writes Derek McDowell
ALL POLITICIANS have the bug. It comes in different mutations and manifestations but basically they all have it. It is that indefinable element in their make-up which makes them want to do things which no ordinary person would want to do. It drives them to expose themselves to the judgment of people they will never meet; it drives them to open up their lives to public scrutiny in a way that most other people would find intolerable.
Most want to contribute. Most want to make things better for the country or their own community. Some are driven by ideology, however loosely defined. Many just like the limelight, the feeling of being important. Some politicians inherit the bug; many develop it at a young age.
Almost all politicians enjoy the cut and thrust, the manoeuvring, the positioning. In short, they enjoy "the game".
In my case, the bug bit early on. I joined the Labour Party when I was in UCD in the late 1970s. I stood for election to Dublin City Council when I was just 26. I was first elected to the Dáil in 1992. Ten years later, in 2002, I lost the Dáil seat by a narrow margin.
I was devastated. It took me a long time to recover my sense of myself. Ultimately, I decided to give it another go. I was elected to the Seanad. I contested the 2007 Dáil election. This time the margin was not narrow. It was instantly clear that my time in politics was over. It was time for Plan B.
The trouble was there was no real Plan B. Politics was so much part of my life for so long that I hadn't really thought about what I might do when it was over. I decided that I needed time to think. I needed time to get politics out of my system. I needed to go away.
So, late last summer, my wife Vicki and I sold the car, let the house, borrowed lots of money and bought round-the-world tickets in Trailfinders. On September 1st we flew to Vancouver.
Shortly after we arrived in Canada, I started to feel very down. This surprised me at the time as I thought I had handled the election defeat rather well. With the benefit of hindsight it seems clear that I was hit by a deferred sense of loss, a feeling that I was no longer the person I used to be.
It was a feeling that was quick to pass. Over the next eight months Vicki and I pushed our boundaries in ways that most people never get the chance to do. We went whitewater rafting in the Rockies; we trekked on glaciers in Argentina; we spent five days canoeing down the Orange River in Namibia.
We stayed in posh hotels, grotty BBs, beachside huts and makeshift tents. We got to know and love the city of Cape Town, a place we have regularly visited since I acted as an election observer in South Africa's first democratic election in 1994.
Most of all, we had time for each other, lots of it. And it was great. When we first left Ireland, I read The Irish Timesonline most days. As time went on I found myself logging on much less frequently. By last March, when Irish friends came to visit us in Cape Town, laden down with Irish newspapers, I could hardly be bothered to do anything other than scan the headlines. Slowly but surely I was suppressing the political bug within me.
Now that we are back in Ireland I am often asked if I see politics in a different way than before. It is certainly true that I see things through a much longer lens. I have no interest in, and little patience for, the daily trivia which makes up political life.
For example, I know why politicians and the media generated thousands of words about Brian Cowen's first 100 days as Taoiseach but it certainly failed to engage me in any way. I suspect I am not alone in this. I guess I am also more conscious than before of the inadequacies in our political system.
It is crystal clear that much of the public does not trust politicians. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. Healthy scepticism is a part of any healthy democracy. But that isn't what we've got. Rather than subjecting politicians to scrutiny and criticism, many Irish people choose instead to treat them with indifference and disdain. Politicians no longer get, and scarcely expect, appreciation of the things they get right. But equally, they often escape criticism for what they get wrong.
Much of the time we muddle through, despite this yawning gap between the electorate and those whom we elect. Every now and then the consequences are laid bare - never more obviously than during the Lisbon referendum campaign when a significant proportion of the electorate, unsure of the meaning of the treaty, chose to trust unknowns on the political fringes rather than the politicians they had elected.
It is not difficult to find a dozen reasons for this disconnect between politicians and the electorate. The tribunals, increased prosperity, the media: all play a part. So, too, do politicians and the political system.
Politicians frequently fail or refuse to engage in genuine political debate about the choices which our society faces. The current bout of shadow boxing about how to deal with recession is a case in point.
Even when we do engage in political debate, it is, all too often, phoney. For instance, a couple of years ago Mary Harney announced a change in the funding of nursing home care. Almost everyone in Leinster House immediately knew that it was a step in the right direction, even if it fell short in some respects. Yet, virtually nobody was willing to say so in public at the risk of upsetting the vocal minority of people who thought that maintaining their inheritance 100 per cent intact was more important than looking after ailing parents.
For all its faults, politics is still a noble profession, which continues to attract more patriots than chancers. I am glad and grateful that I had the chance, denied to many, to make whatever contribution I could.
I miss it. But I am also over it. I have conquered the bug. There is life after politics.
Derek McDowell was a Labour Party TD for the constituency of Dublin North Central from 1992 to 2002 and a member of the Seanad from 2002 to 2007. Inside Politics by Stephen Collins will return in September.