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Haughty...the Final Verdict.

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  • 05-07-2005 8:18pm
    #1
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users Posts: 9,557 ✭✭✭


    After watching RTE's recent docmentry on Haughty, I'm no wiser as to how to sum up the man or his political legacy, the only thing watching it made me feel was an irrepressible desire to shout "Meara! Meara! Chicken and Chips!" at the screen in the style of Dermot Morgan.

    Basically, I think he was an intelligent, but deeply flawed individual who did a lot of good things for the state but with questionable motivation.

    As they say, you can't make omlettes without breaking eggs, well, he made a lot of omlettes and he also broke a lot of eggs.

    I met him once, briefly, and I remember he had the cold, dead, eyes of a shark. Very unnerving.

    How will history remember CJH?


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    #2
    peckerhead
    Registered Users Posts: 3,379 ✭✭✭peckerhead


    As someone old enough to have been a student in 'His' heyday, I'll remember him as a lyin', thievin', two-faced bastard who also did an awful lot of harm to this country. Intelligent, yes, most assuredly - in the 'most cunning, most devious, most ruthless of them all' mode (and yes, I also believe that posterity will record the same verdict on our 'every-mother's-son' Teflon Taoiseach. It'll just take another 20 years for the skeletons to be dug up...)

    I'll grant you he was a learned, perspicacious, even 'statesmanlike' leader. And on one or two occasions during his successor's reign, even I found myself thinking 'Jaysus, CJ would never have stood for that, on his watch..!'

    But then I have an ingrained anti-FF bias. And I think that that documentary - while I followed it, out of pure nostalgia - was an utter whitewash. But maybe He'll make a statement Himself, next time He launches the Dingle regatta...

    Just my 2c worth... :rolleyes:


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    #3
    dermo88
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,000 ✭✭✭dermo88


    I have nothing good to say about him as Taoiseach, especially as I got suspended in secondary school for refusing to shake his hand. I knew what he was then, I know even more now.


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    #4
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    DublinWriter wrote:
    who did a lot of good things for the state

    I am never quite sure what people mean when they say this.

    He was in government, he ran the country, that was what he was supposed to do. I don't think he ran it particualar exceptionally, I think he is an intelligent man who knew about politics. Whether the Celtic Tigger can be attributed to the Haughty government is highly debateable. Did he do a better job than anyone else? Debatable. Was he a bent as a 7 euro bill? Absolutly! He was in politics for everything he could get out of it. He completely abused the system for his own gain for years and years.

    To me it is like saying the bosses of Enron did a lot of good for the company because they actually managing to pay their employees. That is what is supposed to happen, it isn't a act of goodness, skill, or charity. And the damage they did to the company fair out weights the fact that they managed to do the basic actions of their job while breaking every accountancy law under the sun.

    Likewise, saying Haught did a lot of "good" for the country is a strange position to take. He did his job, while screwing his employeer (the State) for everything he could get his hands on. There was no "good" in this action.


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