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PDs’ Print Campaign is a Failure
Read more about: Coalition, Ephemera, Green Ink, Irish Election 2007, Media, Progressive Democrats 
Originally posted on Green Ink:
The current crop of PD election material features the cartoons below. Following on from Simon’s accurate analysis of the battery imagery, not to mention the implicit fatalism of the Don’t Throw It All Away campaign, I have to say these fail to offer anything but the image of a party in the throes of desperation and impending failure.
Consider the above cartoon first with its depiction of the Greens, Labour and Sinn Fein as crocodiles. Leaving aside the strange use of tied-on labels to denote the parties, what is going on here? The unicyclist, whom we assume is the voter, carries a balance with wages and pensions tied either side. If anything these seem to be weighing him down and slowing his progress, hardly a PD message. Now the intended hook is that these are at risk from the Greens, Labour and Sinn Fein. So what are the PDs doing to help this struggling voter? Nothing, other than facelessly waving a placard that says “VOTE PD!” and obscuring the voter’s only way out of danger. The expression on the voter’s face says it all.
The second cartoon is even more ludicrous from a PD point of view. Micheal McDowell is leading a posse of the electorate across a dodgy bridge representing continued jobs growth. That in itself is a shaky metaphor for PD literature, if ironically quite accurate. The clincher for me is where he’s leading them and what it says above it: straight towards a bundle of dynamite with “VOTE PD!” writ large above it. The alternative coalition is waiting, poised with its hand on the plunger. McDowell is running straight towards his own destruction with the PD bloc of the electorate in tow.
I’m really left wondering two things: if this is a cartoonist who has very cleverly subverted his brief so that the PDs have essentially printed anti-PD material; and if anyone in PD HQ is actually looking at this stuff before it goes to press.
good analysis.
How come our demise (that of the PDs) is predicted at every election yet fails to occur? The kind of people wanting our demise are unlikely to be the sort that have voted for us in recent yrs anyway. We only need to do well in a few constituencies to be in with a shot of getting into govt. We are a necessary part of the Irish political spectrum in the absence of other centre-right parties and given the proliferation of left-wing protest parties/groups, we are the only thing standing between Ireland and the balance of power always being held by the left – a situation that existed before our foundation and gave the country decades of mass-unemployment, mass-emigration and punitive taxation. The absence of competition in the electricity, gas and some other sectors shows we still have an important to play. The Left are politically greedy in seeking a monopoly on Irish politics to the exclusion of any centre-right voices. It is a norm in European politics for left and right to counterbalance each other.
Brian, the thing is, we don’t actually have anything equivalent to the Left as seen in European politics, so there is no need for the PDs. They simply upset the balance.
Niall on the contrary we have several Leftist parties, including Labour, SF, the Greens and the Socialist Party. FF and FG are centrists while the PDs are the sole centre-right party. FF and FG will go whatever way the wind is blowing by implementing policies of their junior partners. We are needed as a counterbalance to the Left which is likely to substantially increase its seat tally in this election. Indeed assuming SF and the Greens get 10 seats each, the Left in Dail Eireann is likely to double to around 40+ – 25% of the Dail. Underscores the necessity for a centre-right party to give the electorate an alternative to leftism and centrism.
Brian, I wasn’t writing off the PDs electorally. This post is only about the marketing end of the PDs’ campaign, which is clumsy at best and off the rails at worst.
Brian compared to the rest of Europe even sinn fein are on the right. Look at corporation tax policy even when they had their 17% policy that was half europe’s policy. And as Green ink said this post and indeed my post is not about PD’s chances but about their dire campaign imagery. Do you think that these slogans etc are actually any good. That is the issue here.
Like Simon said Brian, our left is not the same as the European Left. In fact, our Left would be regarded as Centre, or Centre Left in most of Europe, whereas the PDs, they’re right wing by a country’s standards. I’ve always laughed when I’ve heard McDowell refer to the “Far Left” and the “Radical Left” when talking about the likes of the Green Party or Labour. He makes it sound like Pat and Trev plan to introduce Stalinism.
*tap tap* is this thing on? Niall the critique is of the PDs’ election material not your definitions of right and left.
Green Ink, why not post a blog entitled, right and left, and let the two lads throw down fists right here. Seems like a topical one!
I would but it’d probably bust the server!
I thought the PDs didn’t do negative campaigning or so we were told back in January.
Apologies Greeny! If I’m a moth, somebody defending the PDs is a flame. I can’t help myself.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with your critique. In fact, it seems dead on to me, but then again, I hate McDowell and all who ride with him, so I would say that.
I thought the PDs didn’t do negative campaigning or so we were told back in January.
this is the root of negative campaigning hence complex campaigning.
And yes if anyone from the indo is reading. Yes it is a mathematics “joke”.
this is the root of negative campaigning hence complex campaigning.
I’m sure that people will put this campaigning where it belongs, straight in the bin.
So much for issue based debate as the PD’s have stopped doing quality control as I’d would agree with the two points mentioned above: if this is a cartoonist who has very cleverly subverted his brief so that the PDs have essentially printed anti-PD material; and if anyone in PD HQ is actually looking at this stuff before it goes to press
I heard that “far-left” comment again today on the radio. I have to say that in all the years of the party system in this country it has struggled to identify any left-block that was consistent. Essentially we don’t have a left-right divide worth speaking of. Despite efforts of Labour, Garret Fitz and other assorted parties. That Michael McDowell may succeed in refocussing our political narrative in this fashion would be both ironic and (to my mind) welcome.
Green your spot on, many of the PD campaign images lack in the desired expressive output from such ads. Where 2002 was “single party government….” and all that it entailed as a principled opposition, watchdog and driver of policy, the batteries are too easy to parody and the above are Beano standard. I am not gone on “dont throw it all away” but neither am i gone on most other slogans. Its not great but there is one or two worse ones (the greens “its time” is a bit of a missed opportunity).
Yes Simon, i see how you’ve managed to derive complex from the root of negative, but what might I ask be the corollary in this instance? All workings must be shown.
To hell with the topic so!
@Dan: Good point on the negative campaigning.
@ Niall: Ah, that’s ok. Just don’t be at Liz O’Donnell.
@Simon: Maths was never my funniest subject.
@Braz: I’d say anyone receiving these postcards would feel patronised rather than entertained and issues seem to rather successfully avoided by the outgoing government in this election. Michael McDowell’s badgering of Charlie Bird at the PDs’ own press conference last week was a particular low and I think even Brian Boru would have difficulty defending it. And remember to recycle those leaflets people.
@Cian: The political narrative cannot be restructured along traditional right/left lines by McDowell or anyone else because they are the descriptive constructs of another time, constructs that had almost entirely fizzled out by the end of the C20th. Politics is now post-modern, which in effect means an oscillating position based on context and circumstance rather than being governed by an ideological position. The Greens and (at their best) the PDs would be examples of that, and while other parties might officially try and adhere to ideologies they tacitly work within that postmodern frame. Therefore a continued political critique based on a Right/Left dichotomy is redundant, naive and anachronistic.
The Green’s It’s time is a crock of shit all right.
@Dan again: Have you tried to scribble in the margins on IE? It only works if you’re a cartoonist.
Master Boru,
The PDs have suckled Rip-Off Ireland and done a fine job of aspiring the country into the Republick of Grabwhachakhan. What is the PD policy on classrooms, pupil numbers. What is their stance with the sand wedge. More Barbados than Bray?
You have cast your lot with a man that two out of three people consider, at least, borderline repugnant and the only way into cabinet (again) is brown envelope tranfers. In truth, those are yellow transfers.
BEGONE