Just Ronnie

 There’s a policy I’ve adopted since Leaving Cert never to study for an exam the night before. This is sound advice, given to many students these days, better to be fresh and rested for any test you face in life. More important in my view is avoiding the realisation you haven’t prepared properly when it’s far too late to do anything about it.  So when the good people who organise the Waterford Writers Festival asked me to present a talk with former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald on his autobiography Just Garret today, there was no point on Saturday night thinking about whether my questions to the most intelligent man to have held the office were intelligent enough or just stupid. Instead I spent two hours ironing, the nearest thing I have to physical exercise and went to bed aching, bloated and sleep deprived. A big improvement on my usual aching, bloated, sleep deprived with a psoriatic flare up. I think the morning with Doctor Fitzgerald went well, I certainly enjoyed it. He held forth on the pervasive how-the-hell-did-we-get-here questions which naturally enough continue to dominate public discourse in modern Ireland: default (not possible), Seanad (reform yes, abolish no), politics (too local – except this year), Charlie McCreevy (bad, very bad), the banking crisis (quote: “I’ve not written about it because I don’t understand it, though that doesn’t stop other people”). Without the Known Unknown of the banks, Garret Fitzgerald would be confident of us getting out of this mess, but that’s a big Unknown, even though it’s Known. For my part though, it’s history I was after. The respect he had for the founding fathers of the state was striking, he clearly believes the retirement of men like Leamass and MacEntee in the mid-sixties had long term consequences for the state. He turned his back on Fine Gael after the 1948 election when they went into the government with a man who had been Chief of Staff of the IRA just ten years before. The young Garret Fitzgerald had campaigned in that election in the leafy suburbs of Dublin, urging people to vote for Fine Gael, the Commonwealth Party. One of the first things the first Fine Gael Taoiseach did after the election was to declare a republic.  It’s hard for a twenty two year old not to take that personally.  There was so much of interest to report from a thoroughly pleasant Sunday morning that I might just return to it in the future and hopefully will post up a recording of the event in due course. There was one other detail I wanted to relate, which was quite an odd anecdote about Ronald Reagan.  After the talk I was lucky enough to be invited along to lunch with the former Taoiseach. Among the subjects that came up was the visit of Ronald Reagan in 1984.  Now, Ronnie had a certain style, one that fed into the anti-intellectual narrative of modern conservatism wherein he portrayed himself as a regular straight-talking guy, not the smartest but principled and pure.  In Europe many flattered themselves to believe that he, and by extension his countrymen who voted for him, was stupid.  If you still think that have a look at his speech to the 1964 Republican Convention.  But there may have been something in the down home wisdom.  Just before the visit to Ireland to trace his roots, which his people unfortunately were unable to arrange outside an election year, President Reagan had dinner in the Irish Embassy.  There had been a storm the night before and a tree had fallen within the grounds of the Embassy.  On his way out the President asked what would be done with the tree, to which the Ambassador, not quite sure of the tenor of the question, replied that it would probably be removed in short order. “Don’t do that” the President said, “chopping trees is one of the best exercises you can do, especially for the pectoral muscles”.  For the next few months, Ronnie was regular visitor to the Embassy, putting in half an hour’s wood cutting to keep himself in shape.  America, it’s a whole different country. Still though, feeling aching, bloated and sleep deprived tonight, I’ve been looking at the ironing pile and next door’s tree and thinking to myself, what would Ronnie do?