Donald Trump: The Irish Government's Unlikely Best Friend

Let me make an observation as somebody who writes about Irish politics and society for a living: Donald Trump might as well be the Irish Government’s best friend. Why do I say that? Because never in my adult life has a government gotten away with so exclusively focusing on international affairs to the exclusion of almost everything domestic. It helps, of course, that Trump is on the political right and the Irish opposition parties are almost uniformly on the political left: This means that Trump has the power to drive them all doo-lally, demanding this or that statement from the Government. Ask yourself, for a moment, where the emotional centre of gravity of Irish opposition politics lies: Do they care more about house prices, or Gaza? Do they care more about people on trolleys in the health service, or Trump threatening Greenland? Do Sinn Fein, for example, care more about what is being taught in schools, or do they care more about Trump’s “imperialist aggression against Venezuela”? This Trump obsession (note I am not saying “derangement”, because some of the concern is valid) extends well beyond politics into the media. For good reason. Here’s the thing: If you work in Irish politics or the media, most of the “Irish” issues don’t really affect you. Yes, house prices perhaps do, at the margins, or the price of rent. But by and large if you work in Ireland’s chattering classes, you’re reasonably well off. You can afford to be enthralled by the perma-drama in Washington, and not worry too much about whether there’s a chronic shortage of biology teachers affecting schools across Munster. This in turn has allowed Micheál Martin and Simon Harris to spend most of the past year posing as commentators on global events, constantly articulating the “Irish position” to a global audience that doesn’t care but a domestic chatterati that is borderline obsessed with updating the “Irish position” at every opportunity. You may have noticed that the only Irish stories that break through this cacophony of permanent Trump drama are the human interest ones: If some demented man murders his whole family, that will make the news. Or if there’s an awful car crash. Why? Because those stories are the mirror image of the Trump stuff: Human drama. It has often been said of the US President that he honed his skills on reality TV, and in the world of pro-wrestling, where the ultimate objective is to keep the audience hooked: Big dramatic statements, cliffhangers, “what’s he going to do or say next” stuff – all of it has been part of his particular mesmerising appeal to the news, and you can see it work on Irish politicians in real time. To be sure, Irish interests are often at stake: As I wrote yesterday, this country is about to get dragged into the Greenland trade wars against its will and through no fault of our own. But that, of course, is true no matter what the Government says. Statements from the Government are ultimately pointless. We are about to enter that point of the political calendar, of course, when excitement for the big trip to Amerikay by the Taoiseach dominates six weeks of the news cycle. We will get endless late night discussions about “What the Taoiseach should say to Trump”. It is a rock solid certainty that at least one newspaper will ask a panel of celebrities – Terry Prone, Hozier, maybe one of the Kneecap goons or Imelda May – what they would say to Trump if they had a chance. And of course, it won’t really matter. What the Taoiseach says to the US President will not really matter a jot, either to Ireland or to the US. Anything short of openly insulting the man will be ignored, and anything short of presenting him with a solid gold shamrock statue will garner nothing but pleasantries about how much Trump loves his golf course here. In the meantime, the Irish Government is getting away – figuratively – with murder. Homelessness is up, taxes are up, hospital waiting lists are up, rents are up, the cost of living is up, traffic congestion is up – and none of it has any chance of dominating the news. Not while the media and opposition cannot get enough of the Trump drama. In this sense, Donald Trump has proven to be the Irish Government’s very best friend. He sucks so much oxygen out of the room (and yes, even amongst my own readers) that often Irish people appear to care more about what has happened in Minnesota or Arizona than they do about what has happened in Dundalk or Donabate. I am, by the way, entirely unsure what can or could be done to fix this – nothing is I think the answer. But it’s often said that in politics and war, having a lucky general matters. And the leaders of this Irish Government have been exceedingly fortunate to be in office at a time when the political class is so mesmerised by the foreign that they are incapable of focusing on the domestic.