I like O’Leary… but he’d be a disaster as taoiseach
IHOPE Michael O’Leary neither believes the nonsense recently written about his political potential, nor takes himself too seriously: he has a rare talent for raising profits, but he is not a visionary prophet. But bet his eventual Irish Times obituary will quote Fintan O’Toole’s ironic column last Tuesday: ‘An Irish Trump? He’s called Michael O’Leary.’
It is very flattering for the Ryanair ringmaster but deeply disingenuous, because successful businessmen very rarely become successful politicians.
O’Leary is probably wealthier than Trump and his potty mouth has never disgraced his family, but he is just as apt as The Donald to turn every public appearance into a sales opportunity.
His stunts, such as threatening to charge for toilets on Ryanair flights, were basically frivolous, just spoof to sell seats on planes, whereas Trump’s porkies were to win the US presidency.
Trump solemnly pledged to build a wall along the Mexican border and lock up Hillary Clinton before he was elected; now he is breaking his election promises, just like other politicians.
Time will tell but he is unlikely to be as effective a statesman as he was a real estate hustler.
AVITAL component of O’Leary’s talent is that he emerges from his most controversial stunts with more of his opponents admiring his acumen than despising his naked opportunism. Yet I can also imagine the last temptation of Taoiseach Michael O’Leary: lured by a diabolical state-funded freebie, despite his fervent belief in free markets and unobtrusive governments.
Could he resist using his influence for lighter regulation or to get a government subsidy? Self-serving hypocrisy is what many successful businessmen resort to but it is what politicians cannot afford to get caught doing if they are to be successful.
Yet many businessmen think politics looks easy and their negotiating skills are more finely tuned than those of politicians. It’s bit like a scratch golfer seeing hurling for the first time and thinking his superior hand-eye co-ordination would earn him a place on the Kilkenny team. I remember the one successful Irish businessman elected taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, who had a pet food factory and saw his political career implode in the beef tribunal. It was another irony because as taoiseach, Mr Reynolds took the sort of risks for the peace process in 1994 that no shrewd CEO would contemplate taking for his company. As the big boss in his own business, Mr Reynolds, like Mr O’Leary, didn’t have to persuade fellow directors or shareholders to support his decisions. Yet late in life, he made a successful leap from the boardroom to the cabinet table, only to be forced to resign over a sexed-up legal dossier.
THE art of politics is persuading others to give preference to your proposals – and make them think they are their own ideas. A lot of people voted for Charles Haughey because they believed he was a rich and successful businessman and that his money-making skills could bring prosperity to them and to the country.
He was actually broke; a useless businessman who lived on the kindness of passing millionaires. They kept him in the aristocratic style to which he believed an Irish nobleman was entitled.
An egomaniacal businessman like Michael O’Leary, whom I like and respect, would struggle to build a consensus with people in government who he didn’t trust.
And he would ultimately lose patience and get bored with the political process. LIKE many others, I like Michael D Higgins but because I have known him for decades, I feel I have earned the privilege of not taking him as seriously as he takes himself.
And a big part of my enjoyment of him is how preposterous he can appear when gravitas was the effect that he is seeking to achieve.
That said, I do take the office of the Presidency very seriously and expect foreigners to extend the same respect to our Head of State that he is entitled to expect from every citizen of Ireland.
But last week President Higgins, pictured, drew inappropriate conclusions in his hyperbole praising the former president of Cuba, Fidel Castro, who died aged 90, an unrepentant tyrant.
Castro was a giant of the 20th century who cast a repressive shadow over many of Cuba’s people.
He violated human rights, jailed his critics and banned opposition parties.
It was a gaffe that offended many Irish people who do not share our President’s enthusiasm for swashbuckling Latin dictators, dead or alive.
Paraphrasing Shakespeare might have been more apt: ‘We come to bury [or in his case, cremate] Castro, not to praise him.’