“Playing” Politics

Politics is an unusual game. Not unlike the “blame game”, it is played by pretending that your opponent is playing it but you’re not. When caught red-handed in an act of mendacity, accuse anyone who has the temerity to call you on it of playing the Blame Game. Similarly, when you have just made a mess of the job to which you were elected, a common response is to accuse critics of “playing politics”.

But politics isn’t a game. It is the system whereby we decide how the country is to be governed, and call to account those who govern, or who misgovern. It is, in principle, a noble activity, however ignoble many of its practitioners might be. To denigrate it as a game is a dodge, a way of evading responsibility by people who are only too happy to play the game when they have a chance of winning.

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of people in politics who do see it as a game. Fianna Fáil, about to join their third European grouping in ten years, are about power, not ideology. For them, it’s all about winning. So its no wonder they dismiss principled opposition as “playing politics” – it has never occurred to them that politics is anything other than playing.

But you expect that kind of thing from Fianna Fáil. It’s more worrying when you start getting it from high-minded, allegedly non-partisan types, and it makes you wonder if you weren’t a little naïve in taking things like a basic belief in democracy for granted.

The other day an experienced correspondent of a major national newspaper mused that it may be time to abandon the parliamentary system unless the opposition stops opposing. When pressed he suggested there was no other option: “What’s your solution?” (My solution, for the record, is incomplete, but it would involve not dismantling the institutions of the Republic)

The assumption here is that everyone knows what must be done, but won’t agree. All that stuff they talk about in the Dail, or even those arguments you yourself have in the pub. It’s all nonsense. You might think yourself sincere, but you don’t mean any of it. You just want to win the argument, not do what’s best for the country. Like Bill Hick’s Marketing Men applauding him for going after “that anti-marketing market”, this view sees all principles as equally phony but useful cards to be played in the game. Oh, pretending to have a concern for the underpriveliged, right, that’s the populist tactic, that’s a great card to play…

And that’s fine, that’s well and good, when things are going well. It gives the papers something to write about and adds to the gaiety of the nation. But now that things are serious we should abandon the charade of pretending to disagree on matters of principle. These days, politics is just petty squabbling while the country goes to rack and ruin. If only they, the politicians, would set aside politics and get to work doing what’s best for the country.

What we need is a new party. One that will put aside the old arguments. It will be quite simple. Decent people will come together and form a party whose policies will be neither left nor right, but simply correct. The government, and opposition, will exclaim “Why, I’d never thought of it that way before” and will all join this new party and we will be forever relieved of having to think about politics because it will have been abandoned in favour of simply doing the right thing. There will be no arguments, because everyone will agree on what the right thing is.

It is worth noting that we heard much of the same from the US in the aftermath to September 11th. This, the logic went, is an existential threat. What good will due process and democratic institutions be to us, it was asked, when we have ceased to exist? Maybe, high-minded and mature people suggested, it’s best to just assume that the president knows what’s best, to put aside the bickering and get out of the Decider’s way. We saw how well that went for them, how men like Sen. Joe Lieberman who posed as bipartisan patriots, putting the country first, soon were exposed as spineless pushovers who lost their heads and abandoned their principles.

This crisis is our 9/11 – not in the intensity of its tragedy, but in it’s forcing of a reckoning. It is worthwhile to pay attention to people’s reactions to it. These are testing times. Some are passing the tests and some are failing. In years to come it will be useful to remember who kept their cool, and stood by our admittedly flawed institutions, and who lost theirs.

12 Comments

  • So you propose a new political creed that rails against the shallow sham morality and hack-ethics of a tired establishment and is both progressive and democratic.

    How might the marketing men brand it I wonder?

  • You are misrepresenting my position. I suggested there may be a case for a latter-day version of the Tallaght Strategy with regard to taxation and the economy but not on other matters. It is similar to the idea put forward recently by Dr Garret FitzGerald. I don’t advocate dismantling the institutions of the Republic, as you put it. The Tallaght Strategy was not the end of democracy and, in fact, Haughey and Fianna Fail were both out of power within a few years.
    Deaglán de Bréadún

  • Fergal Crehan says:

    Deaglan,

    As I said on your own blog, that’s the oppposite of what I was saying about your point. It is the absense of a Tallaght strategy, not the presence of one, that would lead in your opinion to the loss, by the parliamentary system, of any credibility.

    But in any case, why the need for one? The government have a majority, indeed a a healthy one by historical standards. They don’t need opposition votes. What they clearly lack is the balls to put their name to policies without opposition cover. But if the opposition genuinely (and, in my view, rightly) disagrees with their proposals, what should they do? Support policies they believe to be the wrong ones, for the sake of agreement? That would surely be an egregious example of unseriousness about politics, of playing it as if it were a game with no stakes higher than a small political advantage. This is my larger point, and one you seem uninterested in.

  • My point is that ensuring public consent for the necessary austerity policies and preventing an outbreak of social disorder may require a new Tallaght Strategy. What happens inside the Dáil chamber is not the point but you seem fixated on that. Deaglán.

  • Fergal Crehan says:

    “What happens inside the Dáil chamber is not the point but you seem fixated on that”

    Er, no. It was a single short paragraph in an 800 word post. Believe it or not, the majority of the post was not about you.

  • Sneering and superciliousness do not address the point I was making which I assume you concede by default!Deaglán

  • Fergal says:

    Very well then, lets take this step by step:

    You wrote “if the two sides of the Dáil chamber don’t unite on certain issues, it is hard to see how the parliamentary system can survive this crisis with any credibility”

    I interpreted this to mean that all sides of the Dail must unite on certain issues or…..well, exactly. You failed to spell out what what would happen if the Dail failed to survive the crisis with its credibility intact, though you have been murmuring darkly of anarchy in the streets recently, so perhaps that’s what you had in mind. In any case, if the Dail failed to survive, then it logically follows that some kind of non-parliamentary system would come into being in its place. These are the two options you laid out. All-party agreement, or the failure by the parliamentary system to survive.

    My post (the substance of which you have not adressed – so if we’re going to behave like school debaters, I might as well claim victory by default on that too) pointed out that this Hobson’s choice assumes that agreement on such issues is possible, an assumption grounded on a deeply unserious approach to politics that views all disagreement as posturing, and principles as so much guff that can be adandoned when the Irish Times tells our politicians its time to behave like grown ups and do what we all know ought to be done.

    Ireland is among the longest standing continuous democracies in Europe. We have seen worse days than this and the parliamentary system survived with its credibility intact. I find it disturbing that without a single reason to believe that social breakdown is imminent (over 100,000 very angry people on the streets last month and no violence. We are not an entirely uncivilised people) some people are arranging the chairs for the Committee of Public Safety.

  • Well thank you for finally having the courtesy to respond to the point I was making. We clearly disagree on the gravity of the current crisis. You are clearly not put out by what happened in Greece or Thailand. Nor by what is happening in Iceland or Hungary I assume.
    If you look at the history of Irish politics in the last 25 years you will find a fair degree of evidence that principles and/or policies were abandoned or at least seriously modified when a seat at the Cabinet table is involved. I have written already in the paper about the PDs keeping Haughey in office when they had made him the principal reason they split from FF in the first place. It is at least arguable that the Greens abandoned a principled position (correct or otherwise, that’s not the point) on EU treaties when they got to the Cabinet Room. It’s not always the case that principles are flexible and policies can be fairly freely, er, modified, but I would suggest the situation is at the very least more complex than you suggest.
    In any case, we are not talking here about abandoning principles. There is already broad agreement among the two main parties, at least, on the principle that there is a need for austerity measures and the gap between their policies could be bridged if the will was there. You will recall that FG and SF both supported the bank guarantee.
    It’s your good self that’s being “unserious”, if I may say so, about the depth and gravity of this crisis. But don’t continue to distort my argument that I am arguing for some sort of inter-party coup. I am only suggesting that a re-run of the Tallaght Strategy may be in order and are you saying that was the end of democracy in this State? As stated, it is not a question of ensuring the Government’s majority but impressing upon the public the need for appropriate measures to deal with the shortfall in revenue. It’s people like yourself who tip along complacently – whistling past the economic graveyard, everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, it will be alright on the night – who put democracy in danger.

  • Fergal Crehan says:

    “I am only suggesting that a re-run of the Tallaght Strategy may be in order and are you saying that was the end of democracy in this State?”

    No! You’ve asked me that several times already and I’ve answered. If you still don’t follow me, just read what I’ve written already, I’ve said all I have left to say.

  • That’s fine, just wanted to have my position clearly and accurately presented. Deaglan

  • Your point is, Simon?

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