Favourite Sons

The term ok has its roots in the endlessly fascinating world (for nerds like me) that is American politics.  Apparently it stood for Oll Korrect, a deliberate corruption by the Democrats to make the patrician Martin Van Buren appear more earthy to the voters of the young republic. It didn’t work.  American politics has provided many gifts to the English language. Where would newspaper sub-editors be without the suffix “-gate”? The Watergate scandal was so shocking that the very word itself seemed to carry enough gravitas and menace to sell papers. Its currency has of course been devalued over the years to the point where we now have Sachsgate, Garglegate and who-left-the-immersion-on-gate (a little remembered scandal in a certain house in Lisduggan in the 1980s). Another term I first came across in American politics is the Favourite Son. Favourite sons were in effect Presidential election chancers. Until the 1980’s presidential conventions weren’t the choreographed coronations of today but could be hard fought battles between ideological or geographical wings of the major parties for the presidential nomination.  It would often be unclear which of the front-runners would win the contest, with the nomination sometimes going instead to an obscure compromise candidate. In a deadlock, a favourite son could be that compromise candidate or simply give his delegate support to the highest bidder (more often the delegation would make that decision for themselves, deciding that the favourite son wasn't such a favourite after all).  The 1924 Democratic Convention lasted more than two weeks and went through one hundred and three ballots: there were so many favourite sons that front runners William McAdoo and Al Smith couldn’t secure an advantage.  By the time convention finally selected dark horse John Davis, the party’s credibility was shot. That credibility wasn’t helped when another awkward local issue emerged, namely an attempt by the convention to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.  As many of the Southern gentlemen attending were themselves members of the Klan, they took exception to the plank and it was defeated, prompting thousands of Klansman to lead a torch lit rally next to the convention hall, much to the horror of the local New Jersey yankees. Now comparing the supporters of North Tipperary’s favourite son Michael Lowery to the Klan would giving far too free a reign to the anger felt over the Moriarty conclusions.  More than the implications of how the second mobile phone license was secured, the real anger, irritation and confusion comes from the fact that voters keep electing Mister Lowery despite most people in the country coming to the same conclusions as Moriarty years ago and for free. We have some experience of this in Waterford, where similar sentiments were expressed in elements of the national media in relation to the enduring electoral popularity of Minister Martin Cullen despite voting-machinegate and the procurement-of-public-relations-contractsgate. However as was the case with the Klan in ‘24, the principled metropolitan condemnation of a locality’s political peculiarities usually has the effect of said locality closing ranks. Indeed there are those who view the election of Michael Lowry as a collective North Tipp two fingers to the rest of the country. There probably are practical considerations to his vote, like fending off the closure of Nenagh Hospital, but chiefly I think it’s the fact that he has now no other master but the electorate of North Tipperary who view him as someone who can, ahem, get things done. If Moriarty claims he breaks the rules from time to time, will that damage his reputation amongst his supporters? Of course we all want a country where the guiding hand of public office is rational republican virtue but more people need to see that work effectively and as that’s impossible we sometimes get a politician about whom Justice Moriarty said what he said retaining the support of the voters in a given constituency.  Four years before the Democratic Convention of 1924 the party selected Governor James Cox to run for President.  A clean and well respected reformer he had an equally capable running mate in Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He was beaten by Warren Harding, a favourite son of Ohio who went on to lead the most corrupt administration of the 20^th Century. Cox suffered the biggest popular vote election defeat in history, largely because a traditional ethnic pillar of Democrat support refused to back the decent Cox over the weak and corruptible Harding. Yep, it was the Irish.