Thoughts are currently focused on the web site. Though it is available, it’s been “under construction” for some time now which is absolutely no good. A few people have offered to put some time in to it but it’s really down to me to get the content out. Hoping to find time on the weekend but we’re busy once again with meet & greets. And there’s something wrong with our internet connection in the house. Why is it so difficult (and costly) to provide such a simple service?

We have these sandwich board-like stands with the new poster on the front to try and draw some attention this weekend. And there’s a new flyer which I think looks great. Morning time is scheduled for Morton’s in Ranelagh, with the Swan Centre in Rathmines for the afternoon. And around it all we have to get this new flyer out! Which makes me a little worried about volunteer fatigue – want us at our best for the campaign proper.

Noticing that light is drawing out more in the evenings now which is better for canvassing. Makes a big difference from January.

Campaign launch party on Friday was a success and now all systems are go.

Since I was officially announced as a Fine Gael candidate for the local elections, things have been elevated to a whole new level.

I’m amazed at all the different aspects to a campaign. From the organizational requirements – volunteers, literature, media etc – to the many faces of the campaign itself – meet & greets, the internet, canvassing, letters and so on. It’s a lot to handle. Especially for someone who is getting involved in a political campaign for the first time.

But I’m learning a lot, which is great. Because that means that, whatever the outcome on 5 June, this experience will have been worthwhile.

And I have a great team behind me, from the army of volunteers that come out to canvass and drop flyers, to the dedicated core of four who are running the show, as well as the many experienced hands that link in regularly with advice and ideas. It takes a lot off my own shoulders and allows me to focus on the more important aspects.

Tonight we begin canvassing in bigger numbers. Up until now, myself and one of the team would go out for a couple of hours, with the emphasis on quality – trying to engage with people on the door to find out what their concerns and aspirations are for the area and identify what I could do to help.

But now, unfortunately, the emphasis must shift to quantity. With so many voters in the one electoral area thanks to the new boundaries, there are too many people to meet to be able to spend any decent time at all on the door. I don’t like this as I don’t get enough time with individual. But what to do? If I’m to be able to implement any of my ideas for the community and city, I have to get elected first.

North Korea is on the verge of testing its latest missile, which reportedly has the ability to reach US territory. The Obama administration is watching. Will this be the first real foreign policy test for the new president? And what is the real threat from this reclusive state?

To be clear, the missile itself is not a threat. The Taepodong-2 (TD-2), North Korea’s latest ballistic missile, has never been successfully tested; the first and only launch in 2006 crashed into the Sea of Japan. And though it has exploded a small nuclear device before, also in 2006, North Korea is nowhere near advanced enough to enable it to be able to fit a nuclear payload at the end of the TD-2.

Not that North Korea does not pose a threat to its southern neighbour and by extension the US, with which it has a defence pact. But this latest test, if it goes ahead, should be seen for what it really is: a diplomatic manoeuvre, a cry for attention from a starving child.

For years, North Korea has struggled to remain a viable independent state, plagued by economic ruin, natural disaster and famine. It has stayed any call for help or international aid, preferring instead to fight for its survival, operating under the cold-war rhetoric of national interest, Kissinger realism and deterrence theory.

They are exceptional negotiators, using historical and geographic realities to full advantage, as well as much-hyped threats around missiles and nuclear weapons. They have broken every weapons control agreement they ever entered into, with little reproach from the international community. Not even from the tough-talking George W Bush. For Obamaphiles out there this is a lesson of things to come: no matter their rhetoric, US presidents are bound by the realities that confront them as the leader of the only superpower in the world.

In return, North Korea has gained money and fuel aid, food and, more recently, the lifting of international sanctions and removal from the US state sponsor of terrorism list. How? The US desire to keep North Korea on side, particularly because of its nuclear ambitions.

But this has blinded the international community to the future costs, with North Korea directly and, perhaps more importantly, elsewhere. Bad behaviour has been rewarded and, ultimately, this is the only lesson that has been learnt.

But if the total economic and social collapse of North Korea is unpalatable to the rest of the world, reunification with South Korea is unaffordable. Neither is war an option; the North’s most basic conventional weapons are capable of destroying Seoul overnight.

The solution would seem to be to continue as is with the diplomatic dance in the knowledge that North Korea will keep and develop its perceived deterrent, while the US
and others prop it up indefinitely. We have heard as much in recent days from experts in the US.

Yet the real worry here is not so much North Korea, which is a fait accompli.
Iran is engaged in prolonged negotiations concerning its nuclear intentions, not all that different from the position of North Korea in the 1990s (although Iran’s trans­gressions have been far less). North Korea kept on pushing, crossing the line and nothing happened.

What lessons will Iran learn from the North Korean situation? Can the US appease one country and then scold the next for the same behaviour? Diffi­cult decisions lie ahead for the Obama administration. How he and Hilary Clinton move on North Korea in the coming weeks will set the tone for more important challenges to come.

Eoghan Murphy has worked in nuclear weapon regulation for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations. In June, he intends to represent Fine Gael in the local elections in the Pembroke-Rathmines area.

This article was published in the Sunday Tribune.

It’s 10pm on a Friday. My friends are in the pub, seeing off a colleague who’s being redeployed to Senegal. I’m in the office. I’m on the seventh floor of the Vienna International Centre, gazing out the window, pacing, occasionally sitting down at my desk and staring at a blank sheet of paper, then getting up to gaze and pace again.

On Monday, my boss has a speech to make, and I’m his speechwriter. It’s a big speech: the ambassadors of most governments in the world will be there to hear it. He heads a United Nations agency, and he’s about to be re-appointed for a second term, a significant endorsement. The agency, once fully operational, will monitor compliance with an international nuclear test ban treaty. President-elect Obama has indicated that progress on this will be one of his key foreign policy objectives. It’s an important moment.

As well as pacing and gazing, I have a squishy pink stress pig that I found in someone’s desk. While my friends are drinking, it gets bounced off every surface, drop-kicked into the bin, and sent flying down the corridor. Eventually something clicks, and, quickly, two pages are full. But the job’s not done. For a speechwriter, the job’s not done till the speech is delivered.

To be a good speechwriter, you need to work for an exceptional person. You can’t make it on your own. Speechwriting is a collaborative process, between the speaker and the writer. It requires a meeting of minds. The writer has to absorb the speaker’s voice. You have to hear it in your head, almost like you hear your own.

But it doesn’t matter how in-sync you are, there are always redrafts. You will redraft so much that red becomes your pen of choice; you won’t need any others. Over Saturday, my boss and I work through to a final draft via email and text message; he’s somewhere half-way around the world. He doesn’t call: a good sign.

We agree a ‘final’ draft. It’s good. We’ve nailed it, I think. (You’ll never truly nail it, though. No matter how good it is, when you hear it there will always, always be something you realise you should have written differently.)

I’m in the office by eight am on Monday, looking forward to my seven minutes of fame (even if that fame will only be recognised by a select few friends and colleagues who know my part in the speech). I picture the ambassadors reclining in their chairs as my boss speaks, reflecting on the erudite, cogent homily being delivered… I wonder which parts will be selected for the press release…

My phone rings. It’s my boss’s secretary. I’m needed in his office. The conference starts in 10 minutes. I know what’s coming. I grab my chewed-up red pen, unruled A4 pad and throw on my jacket while trying to unroll the sleeves of my shirt, as I run through the corridors. The secretary shows me straight in.

A speechwriter will have access unlike anyone else in the organisation. There are more senior people, but they’re rarely as clued in to the boss’s state of mind. The speechwriter has to have the privilege of on-demand, one-to-one contact with his boss, to get the insight that he needs into his character and concerns.

The office is empty. Then my boss emerges from his ante-room. He has been thinking. This is not good.

The draft I wrote is “fine”, he assures me. But he’s decided to try something else. Normally, these last-minute calls involve touching up, or deleting some less crucial paragraphs to make it snappier. Not today. He wants a complete rewrite. It is dramatically scaled back and more simple. And it includes not a word I had written.

I scribble frantically as he talks, trying to capture the images and sentiments he relays as comprehensively as our three-minute discussion allow. Then I race off back to my office and start typing. The conference is due to start now, but this is the UN. I’ve got at least 20 minutes, I reckon. Just enough.

Typed. Printed. Read. Scrawled on. Retyped. Printed. Checked. Done. Off down the corridor, into the lift and out into the conference hall, which is nearly full. The boss is bantering with the chairperson. I slip up to the podium and slide the text onto the lectern.

Time for one last revision. Red pen out, two additional small changes made, which I discreetly relay to the boss. Then I disappear off the stage and try to hide myself at the back of the room.

The session begins and, suddenly, it is done. The speech is over. There is a round of applause – perhaps surprisingly, few are given in the UN so this is quite an honour. But I’m not happy. The speech is good. It should be – it’s all his. On this one, I may as well have been a secretary taking dictation. I look over the original text again. I speak it to myself. It’s good. Which was what he had said when we finished on Saturday. So why didn’t he use it?

Who knows? Speechwriter karma: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. ‘You’re only as good as your last speech,’ goes round in my head. Maybe I’m hitting a slump? I try to let it go. It must have happened a dozen times to Jon Favreau, Barack Obama’s 27-year-old speechwriter, I say. Does Favreau ever complain to himself that Obama is getting in the way of his work? I wonder.

Don’t think that because he lurks, invisible, in the background, that he doesn’t care. The speechwriter has an ego. The other guy just delivers the thing.

Eoghan Murphy was a speechwriter at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) in Vienna. He is currently a representative for Fine Gael in the Pembroke-Rathmines area and is hoping to stand in the local elections.

This article was published in the Sunday Tribune.

I’m trying to post a quick update here most days – and as you can see below, I’m mostly failing. But the idea behind this is to give a small insight into what it’s like, as a first-timer, running for the Council. It’s a steep learning curve, and I thought it might be useful for myself to be documenting some of that as it happens, and interesting to others to see what it’s like. Most people feel cut off from politics. They don’t feel it does anything for them, and they don’t feel like doing anything for it. But I think it’s worth trying to get involved and trying to change things – and the main thing is to try and bring the city’s politics closer to its citizens.