This week cannot go by without making mention of Brian! The life of Brian - it cuold be a good movie... or a bad one, depending on your taste.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen has been berated and denounced and criticised and condemned for his RTE interview this week at the Fianna Fail think-in in Galway. Undeniably, it wasn’t a great interview. He was a little horse - I mean hoarse! He made a couple of boo-boos which he instantly corrected himself on, and maybe he was a little tired having spent a fun evening in the bar with his Fianna Fail buddies.
But is this a sin? This has been the burning question all week. Up to page 12 of the national papers have been taken up with this singular issue this week (which seems a bit OTT to me ). Did our leader make a show of himself or was he just letting his hair down after a tough day of talks and letting go like we all do every now and then.
It was probably a bit of both. Doesn’t everyone deserve to have the craic and enjoy a couple of pints and sing an auld song with mates? Indeed. However, is this also acceptable for the leader of a country who is making enormously important decisions on our behalf every day on national and global issues.
I don’t think anyone begrudges Mr Cowen a couple of pints and a song in his own time, but what is causing anger amougst the masses is that people have questioned whether or not he did so to such an extent that it marred his ability to judge and to do his job to the best of his ability. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t such an important job — but leading our country out of recession and back in favour with Europe and the US is pretty important if we are ever to regain credence with international markets and particularly with the European Monetary Fund.
Our country is already seen to have failed badly in its ability to judge a situation and plan for the future, in-so-far as our recession came out of the blue with no notice and nobody in authority saw that it was imminent in time for us to do something to combat it. There is a distinct lack of judgement in this scenario. Brian Cowen was finance minister at the time and his judgement could be called into question in this regard too. Bertie Ahern is clearly not blameless as Taoiseach at this time either.
So is Brian Cowen just a bad judge of things or can he do a good job? He hasn’t had a good run of it from the media. People seem to think he is arrogant and doesn’t show enough respect for his role as leader of the country. He doesn’t pretend to act any differently just because he is leader and this really should come with the job title. If you are going to lead the country, going forward, well you need to illustrate that you can hold your own in formal and informal situations both at home and abroad. It would be very embarassing if Mr Cowen had carried on as he did with foreign colleagues and showed his lack of composure the following morning in an interview.
The point is that the leader of the country should have a little more sense. No matter what party he hails from, the public has a certain amount of respect for the Taoiseach and I think Brian Cowen just lost some of that respect this week. Hopefully it won’t go against the country in the future, or the party. But every one has a bad day — Tuesday was Brian’s.
