Head over to our T
Brian Cowen Takes Questions from the Internet
Read more about: Blogging, Features, Fianna Fail, Irish Election 2007, Media, Web Roundup, irishelection.tv 
Fianna Fail put up the first group of videos of Brian Cowen taking questions submitted via the Fianna Fail website (first thought: get a decent mic).
I embedded the economy one below, I am interested to know what people think.
He has clearly struggled to talk directly to people, primarily because his tenor and language have been impenetrable. This is a clear effort to go over the heads of the media and directly to people – has it worked?
He has the right posture, straight into camera delivering full answers but it is worryingly similar to the detached civil-servant langugage we have become used to. Cowen is clearly a work in progress on that level. For the first part of the video below he has to find a voice, only toward the end does he come to answer questions – maybe pracitce will make perfect.
Edit to add: Another email from our dear friend. At least they got the url right this time, though it is still very clunky – who decided the popular questions? Would be nice to see and vote on the questions a-la change.gov, lots of short sentences but no call to action as yet, simply watch a video. Wonder if the forthcoming election spend reform will make reference to online.
Dear friend,
Brian Cowen answers your questionsOver the last two weeks, people from all over the country have been submitting their questions for me through the new Fianna Fáil website. I received over a thousand questions on a vast number of topics. Given the overwhelming number you submitted, I’ve only been able to answer a selection of the most popular questions. I’d like to thank each of you for putting these questions to me.
Most questions concerned the global economic crisis that faces Ireland. I want to share my answers with you so you can best understand how I and my Government intend to lead Ireland out of these difficult times.
Watch my answers here:
http://www.fiannafail.ie/thetaoiseachanswers
I answered questions about our banking system and the limits that the Government is going to place on bankers’ pay and bonuses. I listened and responded to your legitimate concerns about the pension levy we’ve been forced to impose for the good of the country’s finances. I hear the call for the country to pull together in difficult times and ask our political opponents to contribute their best ideas for the good of Ireland and its people. We have to work tirelessly – together.
Take a few minutes to watch my answers to your questions:
http://www.fiannafail.ie/thetaoiseachanswers
I want to lead Ireland out of this recession into a new type of economy – smarter, flexible and more diverse. I’ve got a plan for the next five years that will create new knowledge-based jobs and industries, intensify research and development and make our country the best possible place to start a new business.
I’m optimistic about Ireland’s future. I believe in the ability of the Irish people to work hard and to show our inherent ingenuity to bring us out of this economic crisis. Things will not get better straight away, but over the coming months and years, they will. We need to prepare for and work towards recovery.
I ask you to join me in standing up for Ireland’s future.
Brian Cowen
Taoiseach
Cowen always appears most comfortable when articulating his own peculiar brand of techno-speak. Like a small child reaching for his security blanket at the first sign of trouble or lapsing into baby-babble in moments of immediate discomfort, he embraces the language of public service middle management claptrap like a shield against the pain of the real world. He does it in the Dail three days a week; he fell back on it for long passages of his Ard Fheis speech; it’s his preferred language for all media interviews and now he’s doing it in his webcasts. Far from being a ‘work in progress’ in this respect, he is, as the old nuns used to say about yours truly all those years ago, ‘quite incorrigible’.
On a more serious note, I can appreciate why the PR powers-that-be in FF want to reach out to the public over the heads of the media. They need to. Media filtering of the government message is doing their leadership no favours at all. But this kind of webcasting is only another tool in the box and probably will turn out to have been a pretty small and ineffectual one. Further, it’s also a highly contrived form of communication. And if it’s all they do in terms of reaching out, it speaks of their bunker mentality more than anything else. They need to do a lot more in direct communication with Joe Public if they’re serious about wanting to get us all to ‘stand up for Ireland’. But maybe they’re too arrogant or too cowardly to realise that?
Really? That’s the best they could do? It’s not as though it was going out live, you’d have thought they’d take the time to work on the presentation. And yeah, getting Cowen to answer questions posed by the public is a great idea, but it’d be even better if we got to choose the questions he answered, rather than some civil servant. There’s no point to the exercise if Cowen gets to cherry pick.
Why has Mr MCErlain (if that is how his name is spelled) former auditor of the Allied Irish Bank, why has he not been heralded as a National Hero?? Why, oh why do we never hear of this brave corageous man whom that thieving allied irish bank silenced, or pardon me tried to silence??? What a wonderful example of humanity!! He should be for ever more remembered. How many people are prepared to put their livlihood on the line for the greater good!!!!!
Exasperated
Bernadett Cassidy