Conor Murphy
Staff Writer
I am a cynical man. I barely ever believed in Santa, I never believed in God and I most definitely do believe that it is most definitely not butter. Last summer I fell for a cheeky fantasy with an upper-class bourgeois swagger and a plain dirty-class wink. He was camp and smart and had an intricate history of defending the weakest peoples’ rights and winning.
I wasn’t hoping for the second coming in David Norris and I wasn’t looking for camp Carry On film shot in the Aras. I was just looking forward to a man full of intelligence, vigour and topped off with a good ounce of smart-arse. I was hoping for a man with a cynic’s memory and an optimist’s imagination; the best of the Irish.
I got that, for a fortnight.
He burst his way into headlines here and abroad, noted as an interesting, unpredictable and intensely popular candidate in a field of lacklustre rumours rather than real contenders. He gained back slapping support from independent TDs and county councils quickly, but storm clouds gathered long before the safety net of official nominations became a reality.
At the end of July the infamous pedestary comments and the letters of clemency came to the fore. Then the implosion came. The spluttering and wavering on the radio. His complete inability to sit back quietly and formulate a sensible response. This was July. What had he to lose by saying he was wrong to write the letter? It would have been long forgotten by September, let alone the election three months away. Even the people who didn’t agree that it was a vote changing issue (read: most people) were concerned by his ineptitude under fire. This man who brought a challenge to the European Court of Human Rights suddenly couldn’t handle RTE news. It was as confusing as it was disheartening.
The smarter rats started started to swim for brighter shores, and the inevitable conclusion happened on the second of August. Forebodingly for a man who entered a presidential race, he said he had dropped out ‘to reassert as far as possible control of my life and destiny’, a statement that was out of touch for a man competing for the confidence of a conservative country with so colourful a past as his. I was furious at him for giving up so easily, over an issue none of the electorate really cared about .
A Facebook campaign based on those original hopes and aspirations grew new life and he returned from holidays with a new colour and a new plan. We all hoped that a month abroad and a new ‘communications director’ might have tempered his ego, allowing him to handle the issue with grace whilst he finally talked about his hopes for the country.
Tubridy scuppered that. Same old evasions hopped out of his mouth, and I felt that familiar plunging of my hopes again. Then the charade over the votes and councils came, then the other seven letters, then the awful debate performances, then the failing under Vincent Browne’s plainly obvious questions and then claims of disability allowance brought out that epitaph of all the most heinous of political falls, ‘it was a different time’.
I don’t care anymore. I don’t care that a man who once held 40% of the public’s vote is now at a square dozen. This was a character who had enthralled me so much that I trolled online forums defending him completely. I turned around in a pub to resolutely defend him against a man I had never met. I believed in politics in a way I never had before. I believed that Norris getting into a powerless position could help grow Ireland into its full potential; a testament to both his original potential and the extent of his failings.
I hope the other candidates will do well now and I’ll still vote, but I wish there had been change I could believe in, just once. When apathy is rife among not only the electorate at large but the youth in particular, it is heart wrenching for all that the person most championed by the youth of Ireland is the one to fail our hopes the most.
But at least I’m not really annoyed, I just don’t care anymore.
