Bertie and the Rule of Opposites

“My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.”

This quote is from The Opposite an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza, the middle aged short man with a pudgy demeanor and frumpy dress sense, not a million miles from our beloved Taoiseach, realizes that every major decision he has ever made in his life has been wrong. To rectify this he takes the radical approach of doing the exact opposite of what he would normally do. View clip here.

Watching the Week in Politics this evening I was reminded of this when they showed an interview with Bertie Ahearn just after the launching of the manifesto in the Mansion House on Thursday. Bertie was seen to try to face down the questions fired at him by veteran journalist Vincent Browne. Most people thought that this didn’t go well for Bertie. The papers sported all the usual clichés the next day. The cloud hanging over the Fianna Fail party since the start of their election campaign is refusing to shift etc.

Yet this interview and clips of quick on the run interviews with Bertie after attending Mass this afternoon showed a man full of confidence and going ‘controversy? What controversy’.

He has every reason to be confident. Bertie, that intellectual pigmy learned a valuable lesson last September. When things doing look good do the opposite of what you would normally. Everyone thought last September that Bertie’s popularity would plummet. As everyone now knows it rose instead.

So Bertie was aware that this election was going to be dogged by this controversy. You would think that by either calling the election early or addressing the issues early on so as to avoid it being used against him in the election he would try to avoid it. But that is not using the opposite rule – the opposite rule says you don’t do anything you would normally do.

When launching an election campaign where you are lower than the last time you called an election you would expect some serious planning, playing to your strengths, taking advantage of your foreknowledge. But that’s not applying the opposite rule. The opposite rules says that although you knew exactly when the President was leaving the country you decide to launch it early on a Sunday morning just as she leaving and inform the media not with razzamatazz but with a misspelled text message and the word you misspell is Taoiseach.

Then later in the day, during the press conference you make a short announcement and refuse to answer questions.

Similiarly, when confronted with a series of allegations that are outside of the remit of a tribunal that you have been using for cover you refuse to provide a comprehensive statement. Rather you let the story ride, saying how unfair it is that no one is talking about your achievements as leader of the Government for ten years, and allow your partner in Government for that decade get into an unholy PR pickle in their attempt to distance themselves from you and the continuing ‘controversy’.

While Bertie was quick to learn this lesson, the intellectual giant Michael McDowell has been much slower on the uptake. Over the weekend they allowed a story to gestate which suggested that they were planning to walk out of Government. This perhaps would have been their normal, scramble for the high ground, course of action. But was it late last night or early this morning that Michael had his epiphany. ‘Of course’ he thought, ‘that’s what we’d normally do – and things haven’t really been working out for us – why don’t we try doing the opposite’.

And so their decision was made. The PD had based their party and the motif of their last election campaign on the idea of keeping an eye on the corrupt tendencies of Fianna Fail. By now, ultimately, turning their back on this, they have their fingers crossed and are hoping for success.