In the heart of the Irish midlands County Offaly is famous for two things: its boglands and the fact that two national political leaders have roots there.
One is President Barack Obama, whom the people of Moneygall claim as their own. The village became world famous in the presidential campaign when it emerged that the United States' first black president could trace his maternal roots to Moneygall. To this day there are billboards at the entrance and exit Moneygall declaring it to be "Obama country".
The other politician, whose connection to Offaly is deeper rooted, is the current taoiseach, Brian Cowen. They have not, however, in Moneygall or anywhere else for that matter erected advertisements boasting that this is "Cowen county".
Unlike the US president, Cowen is not blessed with either good looks or great communication skills. As has been demonstrated in eight days of financial and political chaos, Cowen's performances have been nothing short of a PR disaster.
Take last Thursday, for instance, on the day the IMF and ECB rolled into town and it became abundantly clear that Cowen's government had been forced into a humiliating U-turn after first stating it would not need an international bailout. At a lunchtime press conference inside Dublin's new National Convention Centre on the banks of the River Liffey, Cowen's mood turned tetchy when faced with a barrage of questions cum accusations that he and his government had misled the nation. He ended these exchanges with the classic politician error of blaming the media for distorting the picture rather than accept any responsibility for the climbdown.
This latest and ultimately politically lethal debacle came only weeks after he had to face accusations of being slightly the worse for wear live on Irish radio following a night in a County Galway hotel. This led to the spectacle of a European prime minister having to deny that he was either still drunk or hungover while fending off important questions about the parlous state of the Irish economy.
Now his long career in politics, which reached its zenith when he succeeded Bertie Ahern as taoiseach, is going to end in ignominious failure. He will go down in history as the premier whose government had to go with begging bowl in hand to the international community for an emergency dig-out. He is also going to held responsible for perhaps the greatest defeat to be sustained by Fianna Fáil in its long history.
His defenders will say that Cowen is an intelligent man with a grasp of economics and business. And that he is only pushing the country's four-year economic plan and the forthcoming cost-cutting budget forward in the national interest. What they tend to forget is that during the years of the fake boom he was in charge of the country's finances and failed to heed the warnings from various economists and opposition politicians that it was all built on shifting sands.
Whether Cowen is felled in an internal party coup before the budget or limps on as a lame duck leader until Fianna Fáil's inevitable defeat in a new year election, the 50-year-old former Gaelic football player can comfort himself with one thought. That those who will replace him in Fine Gael and Labour will have to carry out the same round of brutal cost-cutting in terms of jobs, wages and services in order to keep the IMF and the ECB happy.
