How not to manage a political assassination
On Monday 24th October Seán Gallagher probably woke up feeling pretty good. He was, after all, leading in the opinion polls for the Irish presidential election to take place the following Thursday.
His lead was impressive. According to an Ipsos Mori poll in the Irish Times he was on 40% with Labour Party candidate, Michael D Higgins, on 25% and Sinn Fein candidate Martin McGuinness a distant third on 15%.
A few hours later his campaign was in tatters and Michael D. Higgins went on to win the election. In the end Seán Gallagher took just 28.5% of the vote.
So what happened?
On the Monday evening the Irish television channel RTE there was one of the traditional television debates with all the presidential candidates. During the course of the debate Martin McGuinness accused Gallagher of collecting a cheque from a convicted fuel smuggler on behalf of the opposition Fianna Fail party.
At the time Gallagher was a member of the Fianna Fail national executive and had attended a party or reception at which some photographs were taken. Subsequently it appears that he took a copy of a photograph to the fuel smugglers house and, according to the fuel smuggler, was given a cheque for €5,000 for the party. Gallagher struggles to remember what happened.
Nevertheless the implications were made and the suppositions were drawn.
So what went wrong?
Seán Gallagher is an entrepreneur and a judge on the RTE equivalent of Dragon’s Den. He has more than one business and leads a busy life. He is also very much in the public eye. He goes to lots of events and he does lots of things. It would be difficult for him to remember every event he attended and its details. Despite this, an audience member, the chairperson of the debate and Martin McGuinness all attacked him, on several occasions without giving him time to explain.
On his part, Gallagher gave long convoluted answers that left the impression that he was trying to avoid the questions. He part admitted that he may have delivered a photograph and he part admitted that he may have received an envelope. The very fact that his answers were ambiguous condemned him.
Even worse, the following day he was forced to abandon his campaign and his ‘meet the people’ visits in order to trail around the broadcasters to explain his version of events. But the damage was done and the campaign was lost.
What might he have done?
This story had been rattling around for a week before the TV debate and it was posted on Sinn Fein’s website. Seán Gallagher’s campaign team should have identified the potential threat the moment it arose and clarified exactly what had happened. From that point on everyone involved in his campaign should have taken the message out and repeated it continuously. The message should have been clear, simple to understand and unambiguous so that further accusations could not be made.
As it was, different people were giving different accounts of what happened including Mr Gallagher himself. That was a recipe for disaster.
It is interesting to note that the accusations came from the convicted fuel smuggler himself along with Martin McGuinness. Seán Gallagher might have expressed amazement that his integrity was being brought into question by a convicted criminal and a former Provisional IRA leader.
Abandoning his campaign at the last minute was also a flawed move. Difficult that it might have been, he should have remembered that his only audience were the people of Ireland and not the broadcasters who were having so much fun with the controversy.
Instead he allowed himself to be drawn into further confrontation with various broadcasters. Inevitably the story moved on; he found himself having to explain why he had not been clear about what had happened from the very start rather than dealing with the substance of the accusation.
Of course, if he had nothing to hide then his first and most obvious reaction should have been to tell McGuinness to prove it or shut up. Such a show of confidence would have killed the story dead.
See a You Tube clip entitled ‘Sean Gallagher just can’t tell the truth’ from an interview the day after the debate.
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