Last night’s leaders’ debate and after

Did you see last night’s LEADERS’ DEBATE on TV3? I missed the first half-hour but what I saw was very interesting. Equally or even more interesting was the follow-up discussion fronted by Ivan Yates, late of Fine Gael and the man who, according to AIB, owes them €3.7 million.

The debate itself was what you might call lively. Commentators this morning spoke of the participants  all talking at the same time in an attempt to shout each other down. That was the case briefly at a number of points. But much more often it was a case of Kenny, Martin and Burton shouting together , at each other or at Adams, and Pat Kenny trying to get them to shut up before calling repeatedly on Gerry Adams to speak.

So who won? Well, easier to say who lost. Without doubt Joan Burton came across as the leader of a party which has been caught out saying one thing in the lead-up to the last election and doing the opposite throughout the term of the last government. She did her best to convert Gerry Adams’s opposition to the Special Criminal Court into a scheme where jurors would be shipped off to Canada and have their identity changed, which allowed Adams to deliver the line of the night: “This is Fairytales by Joan Burton”.

Enda Kenny’s body language – or do I mean facial language? – was probably the worst of the four. He has a habit of standing very stiff and somehow bulky, rather like President Michael D Higgins (have they a corset  underneath or what?). He also tends to hold his head at an odd angle when under pressure, looking sideways at whoever he’s speaking to. But he did a reasonable job of defending his government’s record, pushing hard at the keep-the-recovery-going line.

Micheál Martin has clearly been told to put some snap into his delivery. We saw it at the FF Ard Fheis and we saw it again last night:  at full throttle from the first word, speaking at machine-gun speed, terrier-like in his attacks. Occasionally like a terrier who’s just swallowed a bumble-bee.

Gerry Adams has in the past had TV debates where he was  judged a disaster – that with Michael McDowell is probably the best remembered. His body language and general appearance last night:  relaxed, almost as though he was enjoying the debate. The other three ganged up to attack him particularly on Special Criminal Court, drawing on events nearly fifty years old, such as – yes, you guessed it:  Jean McConville, IRA, Gerry never in IRA.  Even Pat Kenny weighed in, suggesting that Adams’s objection to the SCC was rooted in the fact that the likes of his colleague Martin Ferris had received heavy sentences from aforesaid SCC. Adams weathered the assault and eventually the others got tired flailing and the discussion got back to Dublin killings in the past week, which gave Adams a chance to point out the  government’s closure of 140 garda stations.

So how did the pecking order look after the final bell?  Adams at the front,  followed fairly closely by Martin, followed closely by Kenny, with Burton leaden-footed some way back. The FF leader’s weakness is that his attacks  sometimes sound so impassioned, he seems to be attacking himself. In contrast Adams, despite having everything but the green room fridge thrown at him, looked calm and even authoritative. I’d rate last night his best TV performance since the night Gay Byrne tried unsuccessfully to give him that rent-a-mob mugging on the Late Late Show.

But it was the discussion afterwards, moderated by Ivan Yates, that was truly eye-opening. As was this morning on radio when we were told that Micheál Martin was a superb debater and looked easily the best of the four. Barbara Scully of the Irish Examiner said that Martin looked always relaxed. Others spoke more kindly of Enda. When they were asked to assess body language – a key factor in a TV debate since JFK debated Dick Nixon – Ivan Yates’s panel laughed and ignored the invitation, as though  some sort of risqué suggestion had been made.

We’ve all heard how spin doctors are employed to tell us what we should think of what we saw and heard. I wouldn’t suggest the various journalists/experts assembled by Ivan Yates were spin doctors, but they did nothing to change my mind about the mainstream Irish media being wearyingly anti-Adams.

Footnote. On RTÉ radio this morning, the four leaders were asked how they thought the debate had gone. Kenny, Martin and Burton made vague noises about that being for the electorate to decide, looking forward to Monday’s debate, important to articulate policy, blah blah blah. When Adams was asked, it was a bit different: “I thought I won the debate. What did you think?” The journalist’s reply was indistinct but Adams followed it with “Then we’re in agreement on that!”. Much laughter in the background.