Drapier: So Arnie did the business! Despite the groping, despite the delinquent past, despite the absence of a policy platform, the son of a Nazi is now the Governor of California. Why? How on earth could someone with the finesse of a premiership footballer become the leader of one of the most liberal states on the planet?
The answer lies in the broomstick. As a prop it was naff, even puerile, but it worked. It defined Arnie not as a politician but an anti-politician. Arnie was the outsider who would clean out the system. He would succeed not because he had a devilishly clever plan to sort out the deficit but because he wasn't a politician in the first place and therefore couldn't be expected to have any plans, whether devilishly clever or not.
California was doubtless the nadir for the political class, but it would be very, very stupid to think that it couldn't happen here. In a sense it already has.
The election of Dana in 1999 goes to show that the cult of celebrity is not an exclusively American thing. The election of a plethora of independents at the last general election was as much a vote against the parties as it was a vote for the independents themselves.
Experience suggests that these guys will be judged by different criteria come the next election, but no doubt there will be others to replace them. It was the very spectre of celebs, "independents" and crackpots that encouraged Martin Cullen to do away with the notion of directly elected mayors earlier this year.
Drapier believes that Martin got it wrong. The election of supposedly non-political politicians may be intellectually senseless but it allows our democracy to survive at a time when politics and politicians are in very bad odour. Better that people should vote for a loony rather than not vote at all.
In time Arnie will develop a policy platform and in time he will be judged on that. Ultimately there is no such thing as a non-political politician but for the moment it's the best ruse in town to get the votes into the box - on both sides of the Atlantic.
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The truth is that the Dáil isn't quite the same without Joe Higgins. His acerbic wit and madcap politics add a certain colour, which few others can match, but if we are missing him then his fellow Trots on the ground are missing him even more.
The bin charge protest is backfiring badly.
Partly it's the tactics. Even people who don't like the charge think that obstructing binmen is as step too far. Partly too, it's the style of the protest. The clenched fists and the misplaced revolutionary rhetoric are a sure-fire turn off.
But increasingly it is the merits of the argument itself. A few months ago most people thought the charge was a pain in the neck whether they paid it or not. But increasingly Drapier is meeting people who proclaim themselves happy to pay on the grounds that it is the environmentally right thing to do.
The suggestion that the charge is a form of double taxation was always facile but in the light of the McCreevy cuts in income tax, it is plain silly. The fact that the argument is being made by "socialists" is incomprehensible.
The great cities of Europe, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin are controlled by the left or have been in the recent past. Everywhere the argument is the same. The left promises better public services in exchange for higher community charges (whether rates, property taxes, charges or whatever).
Even our own Labour Party makes this argument when it's feeling brave. It is after all one of the few remaining vestiges of the left-right distinction.
But not so Joe and his band. Why take risks by demanding higher tax to pay for a better health service when you can get a few cheap votes by pretending that there is something radical in refusing to pay for your bin to be collected?
Of course Joe and his mates have history in these things. Remember Derek Hatton and his Militant comrades in Liverpool at the end of the 80s? Obviously Joe and the comrades didn't learn the lesson but the rest of us should.
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Drapier is fed up with bleating publicans. The argument about smoking in pubs is over, done with, complete and Micheál Martin has won it by a mile. His job was made all the easier by over-the-top tactics and specious arguments made by or on behalf of the pub owners.
For the record . . .
Drapier doesn't believe that a single job will be lost in the pub trade as a result of the ban. Not thousands of job losses, not hundreds, not even one. True, there are plenty of people who don't like the idea of a ban but Drapier has yet to meet a single one who is less likely to visit the pub as a result.
What exactly do the publicans expect to happen when the ban comes in? Where do they expect the disgruntled to go? Do they really think that young people will stop going to pubs and nightclubs of a Friday night just because they can't light up? Do they seriously believe that our menfolk will stay at home in the evenings with the wife and a packet of 20 rather than go to the pub?
Are they really asking us to believe that tourists will boycott our pubs because they can't bring their Gitanes in with them?
That publicans should make such transparently bogus arguments is bad enough; that the Minister responsible for policing the ban should give them some credence is much much worse.
Frank Fahey was sent out on radio during the week to clarify his position. Instead, he managed to reinforce the notion that he was facing in both directions at the same time. Backbenchers can be forgiven a bit of two- facedness in dealing with vested interests. Ministers should not be allowed the same indulgence.