Sound of silence key to success for the man they couldnÕt harangue

Date Published: {J}

Enda Kenny didn’t show up for a TV3 leaders’ debate last week and the media world held its collective breath – whereas the rest of the country just got on with what’s left of their lives to get on with.

Initially the Fine Gael leader wouldn’t debate before Vincent Browne because the old curmudgeon of Irish broadcasting had suggested Enda should get a gun and kill himself.

Then he decided he had a prior appointment to address a public meeting in the quaintly named Bush Hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon – a punishment that, if Mr Browne were a little more circumspect in his pronouncements, might well have fitted the bill as sufficient punishment in the first place.

The upshot was that the TV3 leaders’ debate was reduced to a straight fight between a man who might be Tánaiste and a man who will lead the opposition – the man who would be Taoiseach was dealing with the difficulties of an unemployed Finglas road sweeper looking for a job in Leitrim.

Like many politicians from the past, it turned out that Bobby the road sweeper wasn’t quite what he seemed to be either – he is actually a self-proclaimed satirist, a profession from which he might find it far more difficult to make a living than if he actually did have a talent for sweeping roads.

And at the end of it all, the media pronounced Micheal Martin as the winner which is a sort of consolation prize up there with landing the spoils in the big Pro-Am in the run-up to the British Open.

When the big prizes are given out, the man they couldn’t harangue will take the top job – and the quieter he stays the more his prospects increase. Indeed if he emigrated now, he might well find himself with an overall majority.

He did break his silence for Monday night’s five-way leaders’ debate on Frontline but, as one tweeter termed it, that looked more like an audition for an ageing boy band than a debate. Five men in suits shadow boxing and not landing a blow, dodging real answers to all six questions for an hour and a half.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.