Was Pat Kenny right to ask the Taoiseach if he had ever taken drugs?
Who cares? It was hilarious.
I’m still laughing at Leo Varadkar’s rabbit-in-the-headlights response when the master broadcaster threw the question in at the end for the element of surprise.
“Hot Pless, Het Prass, Hot Press,” Leo stumbled and bumbled, while trying to say that he had answered the question in a Hot Press interview years ago.
Pat followed up with: “Which is?” – prompting four seconds of silence when Leo looked like he’d soiled his onesie. Virgin Media reporter Gavan Reilly quipped it felt more like decades.
It wasn’t just the moment of the Leader’s Debate, it was arguably the moment of the campaign – at least in terms of political satire.
Even Micheal Martin couldn’t stop himself laughing. The whole country was in knots.
This is why we watch these live debates – for these awkward moments. It’s pure theatre. And for about four seconds there, I felt a bit sorry for Leo Varadkar.
It’s not about whether or not Leo took drugs. It’s not a judgement call. It’s about his reaction.
An excellent debater, and usually so sure-footed, this threw him into a tailspin. It’s why politicians are rightly afraid of being interviewed by Pat Kenny.
Whether Kenny had a right to ask it or not has become a matter of debate.
Some – like Fr Peter McVerry – said it’s unfair to judge what people did when they were young. It’s a fair point.
The practice of “offence archaeology” - digging into politicians’ past in order to shame and scandalise them – is toxic and is a horrible feature of US politics.
Nobody is suggesting young people shouldn’t have the freedom to make mistakes and learn – but if they’re going to lecture us about an issue, they should not be afraid to come clean about their own pasts.
We are living through a very serious crime problem driven by cocaine use, often by a middle class who can’t – or don’t want to - join the dots from their habit to the murders of young boys caught up in the drugs underworld.
Pat Kenny isn’t unique in asking the question. Last Summer’s Conservative leader election in the UK was marked by a series of revelations by candidates on what drugs they had taken, after Rory Stewart admitted smoking opium in Iran 15 years ago.
It’s no bad thing to force politicians to reflect on their own possible hypocrisy.
But it would deflect from the real issues if we were to go down the road of over-focusing on what Leo did back in the Millennium.
Meantime, it was a great laugh in a TV debate that could have otherwise been dull. I’ll never look at the hot press in the same way again.
