Irish Election are pleased to announce our collection of Irish 
Bertie versus Enda: a masterclass in political boxing
Read more about: Uncategorized
If you didn’t see the big debate last night, you can pick it up here. Reactions on the blogosphere are mixed. Simon reckons, the taoiseach is feeling very pleased with himself. Harry, accurately describes it as “a tense defensive battle”, that Bertie shaded on points, but in which Enda manages to look like a future taoiseach. Ahem, don’t think Damien was terribly impressed. Bloggorah has some insight into the tie situation. Shane Hegarty at the Irish Times, reckons that Bertie killed Kenny! And here’s what Simon really thought.
For myself, whilst I think there is some measure of truth in the idea that Enda is still in touch, it I’m more with Harry in the sense that neither of them really shone.
If these were two boxers, you say Bertie stayed low, and Enda stayed high. Accordingly, it was the taoiseach who landed nearly all the light and sneaky body punches. And when Enda tried to counter attack, he responded, “If you keep talking over me, I’ll have to keep talking over you”. None of the punches were hard, or match winning, and pushed in in an undertone but small, statistic packed and enough to keep ticking up the points.
Bertie did two things well. He navigated the Bertiegate stuff that has arguably been the weight on the early part of his party’s campaign, and then get the good news story of the prosperous last ten years up front again. What’s been strange about the campaign so far is that that undoubted good news on the economy has been sooo buried.
Maybe Fianna Fail are deliberately trying to live down ‘the spintimes’ of the last election, and PJ Mara’s fuzzy ‘It’s showtime!’ kickstart? Maybe they have over invested in showcasing the good news in Northern Ireland (always of limited short term political value in the Republic)? Or maybe they have just been buried down so many ministerial and policy mineshafts that they simply didn’t have time to prepare a single strong narrative for this election?
In addition, I think, he may also have blown the idea that Health is his administration’s poisoned chalice. The misanthropy of the Heath brief is hardly a myth, founded as it is in the reality of a rapid rise in demand from a system originally constructed largely out of an amalgam of church based philantropy, private health care, and financial input from the once meagre resources of the State. The growth in the economy, and the rapid shifts of population both from west to east as well as considerable in-migration have left it straining at the seams.
Last night Enda barely landed a blow on the health issue. Indeed there was little argument with the fundamental reforms effected by the Health Act of 2004, which set out to try and unify the state’s rag bag heath care system through the Heath Service Executive, or Mary Harney’s recent battles over pay. Instead much of it centred on the problems of A&E, which revolve smaller and smaller detail, that makes it hard for the opposition to score any obvious points.
Will make a difference when it comes to the polls next week? It should lift a few FF heads, and maybe convince a few outsiders that that 20 seat loss predicted by the Irish Independent on Monday can be reduced to between ten and zero. Or maybe not.
I don’t think it will make any tangible difference, though at this stage a lot of pundits are concentrating on how confident the party leaders appear, how comfortable they are in campaign. It seems to be all about athmosphere in the last stages of the election. They argued about issues that most political parties agree have to be resolved. But their ideas for resolving it, specifically health care differ little: 500 beds, 2000 beds, where will they take the money, will this be taken from other services in health care, like Cancer treatment, did the party manifestos mention where it’ll come from? Who cares?
That level of detail is something that will be worked out. Edna blew his chances, largely because he doesn’t have a strong enough critique of where Fianna Fail are going wrong. I would argue that this is because there is very little difference in their thinking and this made it a very boring debate.
It occurs to me there were two types of people watching the debates over the past two nights: people who had already made up their minds and were watching to see how their boys did, and undecided voters.
The already decided will highlight the good points their preferred leaders made regardless, so the crucial viewers are the undecided.
If at this stage you don’t know who you are going to vote for, would the last two nights’ debate really make any difference to your decision making?
For the undecided voters, it really is impossible to tell from these two nights of political theatre which party has the best policies. If they are not clued in on each party’s policies already, then determining who ‘won’ the debate will almost certainly be impossible for them. Recognising that Bertie ‘caught’ Kenny on Garda stats or Kenny ‘outwitted’ Bertie on crime or whatever will be outside these voters’ capabilities unless they are familiar with the issues and with the parties’ policies in this regard. Presumably if they were they would not be undecided. So I think its a fair enough assumption to say that undecided voters are incapable of determining who won the debate.
Which leaves the media.
It doesn’t really matter who won the debate (can these ever be conclusive?); it’s down to who is perceived to have won the debate. Unfortunately, the media (including the blogosphere), with their respective partisan views, will determine this for floating voters. Bertie ‘won’ on tax; Kenny ‘won’ on health – does this mean FF’s tax policies are better or FG’s health policies are better? No, just that the leaders ‘appeared’ more convincing on these subjects, according to whatever journalist/commentator.
The reaction to the debate is what’s really important. So if the Irish Independent decides Bertie won, there is probably more of a likelihood that undecided voters who read the Independent will vote FF.
In this light, the Indo’s headline this morning is a disgraceful piece of journalism – a personal opinion presented as fact.
The whole episode is a debasement of politics. I can only hope Pat Rabbitte was right when he said most voters had made their minds up already prior to the debates.
Right now, the momentum of the election campaign is with FG/Labour. Bertie had an opportunity to stop that momentum but he couldn’t take it. He needed a knock-out punch and he couldn’t deliver. Enda just had to stay standing. A draw or narrow defeat was good enough.
Bertie is a liability as leader of Fianna Fáil now. Brian Cowen would have taken Enda to the cleaners. When it comes to post-election coalition negotiations Bertie could be sacrificed as a sop to Greens or Labour.
I’m a touch sceptical of that Mark. You might be right, but my feeling is that the opposition needs to be a little further ahead than it is in the polls currently to be sure that they can sustain the loss of the number of wobbly-legged waverers at their ‘moment of committal’ next Thursday.
Did anyone see the new online election game at ireland.com? You pick your own cabinet from south park animation style irish politicians, throw a few pies around and enter a competition to win tickets to electric picnic. It’s worth a look for the soundbites.. You can play it on
http://www.ireland.com./diycabinet
This election is a joke. Between that Liberal Mc Dowell mounting lamposts and the two prosepctive leaders of the country esposuing their left wing policies last night they’d drive you to despair. At least my policies are honest, if rabidly right wing and bordering on fascist. I’ll tackle the criminals by fighting fire with fire – literally – anyone earning over 100k will be provided with semi automatic weapons for the purpose of self defence.
http://www.ndd.ie/
The repeated accusations of Fine Gael double-counting are echoed in Dublin South East party candidate Lucinda Creighton’s sixteen-page glossy colour A4 pre-election personal manifesto.
Her three-step prescription to ‘fix’ the health service includes
in Step 1…
‘Set up a network of Urgent Care Centres, led by GPs and trained nurses … ‘ ,
and in Step 2…
‘Set up a network of Urgent Care Centres, led by GPs and trained nurses … ‘ .
Step 3 includes the curious pledge to ‘Abolish the HSE – …’
To facilitate the bewildered in keeping up with things, under Fine Gael, older people can look forward ’subsidies for home IT equipment’.