Buddy, can you spare a dime?

national | history and heritage | opinion/analysis

Saturday June 17, 2006 10:27

by Sean Crudden - impero

sean.crudden at iol dot ie

Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth.

087 9739945

A Conventional Man

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burning.

Charlie Haughey created his wealth not by the amount of goods and services he produced. No. He backed the future against the present (in a way it may no longer be prescient to do) and, of course, he unapologetically milked a few wealthy benefactors and friends.

Like a fist-fighter or golfer that is hard to beat Mr Haughey’s method was orthodox. He knew the rules, he spoke clearly and distinctly, he dressed well, he stood up straight, he espoused the conventional values his education and upbringing offered him. He may have played a variation here and there in a minor key but, mainly, he kept to the major key - the middle of the road. In the last analysis he showed total respect for and complete commitment to the institutions of family, party and parliament.

Today, looking out at the morning in a verdant land flowing with milk and honey, his many critics seem like a pack of gobshites. He himself indicated then that he did not fully understand what motivated them and now I don’t think there is anyone living that can even guess.

Of course as one gets older it is the paradoxes and ironies of life that impress. Why is it that a more erudite and polished leader of "peerless acumen" had much less control of his party and government than the present incumbent? Were his political confreres more capricious and treacherous than the team Bertie Ahern has to deal with? Hardly. Was Mr Haughey less imposing or intimidating than Bertie Ahern? No. It might be possible to explain the paradox in exact detail but it is hardly worth while to do so. Let us put it down to a different personal genius in the two men

Of course there are practical and ideological stresses bearing down on the country now that may be less obvious than those of Mr Haughey’s day but which may be of greater portent. The age ahead may be more suited to the stoic than the epicure. But there is always a need for a certain breadth of vision and an absolute requirement for the application of intelligence untrammelled by any suggestion of a mean-spirited censorship.

In the case of Mr Haughey we have the myth that one man can work the oracle. In the future, I think, increasingly we will all be forced into the arena.