The media went into overdrive. (The American public – ordinary folk outside the beltway – didn’t seem too bothered, but when did that ever get in the way of a decent frenzy?) The Defining Moment happened at the annual Hog Roast of The Foggy Bottom Elks. This is the social highlight of the year for the lodge and takes place in the neighbourhood’s only five-star motel, The Four Seasonings.
It’s a big deal for The Foggy Bottom Elks, but that’s about it.
If it hadn’t been for the presence of a hungry cub reporter from the local high school newspaper nobody would have been any the wiser.
But, as the evening drew to a close, it happened. Will the world ever be the same? But it’s true. It happened.
Barack Obama had a Brian Cowen moment.
The Foggy Bottom elks – pillars of the DC community – fell into their soup and snored.
“I was so relieved. This is what America has been waiting for. Barack spoke for 17 minutes with the aid of a script, and by the time he finished, we were no wiser than when he started.
“It was inspirational. People snored for a full 10 minutes. This was something to tell the grandchildren,” a delirious Mrs Jolene Shrillington told CNN the following morning.
She quoted the words of the great Van Morrison: “Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?”
Actually, it can be like that all the time. All she has to do is buy a plane ticket, come to Dublin and visit the Dáil.
Look it, some of us went a bit mad last week. Thank God for all those sensible letter writers to The Irish Times, who fired off missives over the weekend begging for a bit of perspective on Brian Cowen's speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce last Thursday.
And as the Taoiseach droned on in his usual fashion yesterday afternoon, we realised that it’s time “the optics” were returned to their rightful place in Irish society – behind the bar.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny had a bit of fun about it all during Leaders’ Questions.
“I want to give the Taoiseach some credit today. I was glad to see you spoke a piece of your mind last week. In fact, you spoke it so well that you cause some sort of media frenzy; a sort of love-in of the word of the Taoiseach. And if it wasn’t so serious I suppose it would be great,” began Enda, tongue dusting the inside of his cheek.
It would be great, he mused, if there weren’t more than 326,000 people out of work and there wasn’t a crisis of confidence in our banking system and hundreds of families beside themselves with worry. And no sign of any visible plan from the Government.
“In fact, somebody rang me after your contribution, Taoiseach, and they said ‘you know, if Brian Cowen made two more contributions like that, the recession would be over’.”
Fianna Fáil’s Timmy Dooley – the best ground hurler never to have made the Clare team – did his best to puncture Enda’s recollection of that telephone conversation. “Who’s that – Richard Bruton?” he sniggered.
It took the wind out of the Fine Gael leader’s sails, but he’d made his point.
Then he moved on to the more serious business. People who work in the public sector and were hit by pension levies want to play their part in helping the economy recover, he told the Taoiseach. But they want the system of cuts to be fair and balanced.
Did Brian Cowen believe that the levies, as implemented last Tuesday, “are fair and balanced?”
The Taoiseach rose to his feet, quickly proving that the sparkle he displayed for the Chamber of Commerce would not be forthcoming for the occupants of the Dáil chamber. “Obviously, the question of fairness can be an objective thing, or a subjective thing....” he began, and things went downhill from there.
Sitting two places away from him was Minister for Health Mary Harney. Now, there’s a woman who could teach Cowen a thing or two about speaking off the cuff. She’s a terrific speaker, and at her best when she doesn’t have a script to impede the flow.
But then, as a worried and slightly lost nation looks for somebody to offer a guiding and inspiration hand through this current vale of tears, would they choose Mary Harney to be the one? After all, she knows how to deliver an uplifting speech.
Eh, no.
Enda wondered if, perhaps, the Taoiseach might consider “a tweak” or two of the pension levy, bearing in mind how workers on very low incomes were being asked to cough up quite a lot of money they could ill-afford.
Brian’s reply lasted no more than a minute of a mind-numbing monotone. The only words that drifted through the fug were “stabilisation update”.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore raised the plight of families who are sick with worry over whether they could keep up their mortgage payments. They fear they might lose their homes. He appealed to the Government to introduce measures to restore their confidence.
As it stands, and the way it looks to ordinary people, big loans are recapitalised and small loans are repossessed, he argued.
“There can’t be different laws for everybody,” soothed Brian, insisting that his Government would provide “reassurance” for people “who get into difficulty with their principal private residence.”
He was determined that the banks would treat these people in “a humane and sensible” fashion. Any vet can tell you what that means.
It didn’t take long for the Chamber of Commerce New Dawn to fade into a yet another mumbling twilight. The penny dropped. Nobody really cares whether Cowen makes a rip-roaring, emotional, aspirational speech to a ballroom full of businesspeople in Dublin or a field full of Offalians in Tullamore.
They don’t care whether he comes into the Dáil in a Saville Row suit with hair styled by Bono’s barber, or whether he comes into the Dáil wearing a kilt to the accompaniment of the Emerald Girls Pipe Band.
They don’t want to hear about handlers and media strategies.
Optics are out the window. Handlers are so last decade.
There’s just one question, the one question that they always had when some of us were swooning about his Barack Obama moment.
Where’s the beef, Biffo?
