Is McDowell the wise old head to marshal the rural rump of troops?
SO, could a 72-yearold political revenant from the age of Garret FitzGerald, who was taoiseach 40 years ago in the 80s, really reinvent Irish politics in the age of TikTok?
That is the fairly herculean task being assigned to Michael McDowell in the wake of the rout of the Government by a scattering of senators and Independents... plus Peadar Tóibín.
Mr McDowell himself famously declared that he was retiring from frontline Dáil politics after losing his seat and his party in 2007.
He certainly isn’t retired now, for in the wake of the referendum, while he has wisely maintained an enigmatic silence, McDowell is not short of job offers.
The Government, and especially Fine Gael, is certainly in a conniption over the consequences of McDowell returning to the hurly burly of Dáil politics.
The view is that James Geoghegan, Leo’s designated replacement in Dublin Bay South for that turbulent priestess Kate O’Connell, would not fare too well in such a setting.
The fear in Fine Gael though is that if McDowell – in some vague role of being the people’s watchdog – were to impose some shape on the peasants’ revolt of Independents, a lot more Fine Gael TDs would lose their seats.
The McArthur-style return of McDowell is somewhat typical of a career in which he has – to borrow his own catchphrase of ‘radical or redundant’ – veered between the two extremes of triumph and disaster.
He already has one revolution under his belt of course, dating back over four decades, courtesy of the creation of the Progressive Democrats, after Des O’Malley was kicked out of Fianna Fáil in 1985 for ‘conduct unbecoming’.
THE conduct in question was refusing to oppose a Bill allowing contraceptives to be sold to people aged over 18 in pharmacies. It began in triumph, when the former acolyte of the-then Fine Gael taoiseach Garret FitzGerald was comfortably elected in Dublin South East, now called Dublin Bay South.
But Garret and FG, who never really forgave McDowell for his departure, were waiting in the manicured grass.
In 1989, a pattern began whereby whenever the PDs were in power, McDowell lost his seat. After a finely calibrated vote-sharing strategy by Garret FitzGerald, which almost resulted in Garret losing his own seat, the master of the Law Library lost out to the humble FG church sacristan, Joe Doyle.
It is believed the exquisitely executed manoeuvre was one of the favourite electoral achievements of the deceptively guileless FitzGerald.
They don’t forget in Fine Gael, and McDowell wasn’t too popular in FF either, with Charlie Haughey fabulously claiming he was ‘the nastiest piece of work’ ever to enter Dáil Éireann.
In 1992, McDowell returned to the Dáil but the ‘Spring tide’ meant it was Labour and Dick Spring – who once described McDowell as being capable of ‘a wild speech at breakfast time, lunchtime and before or after dinner’ – rather than the PDs that got back into power.
It really looked as if the end was nigh for McDowell when, in 1997, after a famously long count lasting a week, the mildmannered former Green leader John Gormley defeated McDowell by 27 votes, with salt being rubbed into the wound by the PDs’ return to power.
His tenacity was amply rewarded in 2002 when McDowell almost single-handedly foiled Bertie Ahern’s attempt at an overall majority by climbing up a lamp post in Ranelagh brandishing a ‘One-Party Government? NO Thanks!’ poster.
But McDowell, having described the then taoiseach’s pet project, the Bertie Bowl, as ‘a Ceauşescu-era Olympic project,’ promptly went back into Coalition with Mr Ahern.
After the delayed triumph of replacing a very reluctantly departing Mary Harney as party leader in 2006, triumph was followed by excruciating failure in a narrow electoral loss to his nemesis John Gormley.
The campaign featured an astonishing confrontation called the Rumble in Ranelagh, when Gormley confronted McDowell on the street just as the PD leader was preparing to unveil a ‘Left Wing Government? NO Thanks!’ poster.
Afterwards, amid jeers from Sinn Féin, McDowell said: ‘I love my country and I am deeply ambitious for it, but as far as I am concerned my period of public life as a public representative is over.’
Since then, McDowell’s interventions in public life, even after his return by way of the Seanad, have been rare.
They have though, courtesy of the key role he played in the shock defeats of the plans to increase the powers of Dáil committees and an utterly opportunistic attempt to abolish the Seanad, been utterly decisive. Now, after sinking a third Fine Gael/Green idée fixe, he finds himself – at a similar age to Joe biden when he cleaned out the Trump swamp – at the centre of an extraordinary political environment.
This is typified by the circle of political friends and potential friends he has attracted during what appeared to be a quixotic challenge to the might of the party system.
These include the former Labour ‘Gilmore Gale’ TD Michael McNamara, who now inhabits a very different political space to the he started in.
There are intriguing whispers in the air about a possible alliance between the Law Library set of McDowell, and the country and western king-in-exile Michael Fitzmaurice, under the banner of ‘common sense’.
In a political system where women tend not to thrive in the main parties, three strong female TDs – Verona Murphy, Carol Nolan and Marian Harkin – are being associated with this putative alliance, whether they like it or not.
Wily foxes such as Noel Grealish and Seán Canney will also be wondering if some of the pixie dust of a McDowell link would accentuate their prospects.
Sharon Keogan is not exactly one of the South Dublin liberal set, but if the fiery senator attempts to attach herself to any movement for change, it will be hard to fight her off.
There are important questions as to the methods by which any new political movement could be set up, the not unimportant issue of the desire of Michael McDowell to lead any such movement, and his suitability.
METHODOLOGY can be cured swiftly enough, for there is no need, for example, to create a conventional party. Indeed, if the electorate is in revolt against political parties, that would be fatal.
An Independent alliance – somewhat similar to the various Independent Dáil groups – could work, however.
Significantly, when it comes to the matter of Dáil or Seanad, there is no need for McDowell to descend from his beloved Upper House eyrie to lead, or be the public face of, any group of Independents.
And when it comes to suitability, increasingly it looks as though this will be an election informed by the increasing isolation of a public who are silently, but deeply alienated from all of the political parties.
A vulnerable people are seeking a strong person to provide certainty and leadership.
But, should an Independent Moby Dick rise, it will be an incoherent force requiring someone with wisdom to provide it with coherence.
Many will argue that, after all of his political experiences, no one is more qualified for the role of a national eminent grise than McDowell who, if he agrees, could lead us to very interesting times.