It’s over for McDowell. Why can’t he see that?

RANDY Newman, the great US singersongwriter, has always confused and offended lots of people. To be fair, it is usually a case of simple misunderstanding. Newman’s unique selling point is bitingly satirical songs that often involve him assuming the guise of some unsavoury character.

Given that he has taken on the persona of a slave trader, a bigoted redneck from the Deep South and even a child murderer at various times, it is easy to see how the confusion could arise.

But there is one particular number in his back catalogue that leaves very little scope for misinterpretation.

It is called I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It) and its subject matter is washed-up rock stars who fail to realise that their moment in the sun is over. We all know who the guilty men are. Instead of retiring gracefully to spend some quality time with their wine cellars and luxury yachts, they choose to continue making music that nobody really wants to hear.

Newman nailed the stereotype perfectly, nowhere more so than in the following lines: ‘Each record that I’m making/Is like a record that I’ve made/ Just not as good.’

Although he had musicians in the crosshairs on this particular occasion, he could just as easily have been talking about politicians. Because very few of them ever realise when the game is up, either.

Around 50 TDs lost their seats in the recent general election. By my reckoning, the majority of them hadn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of being re-elected in the first place.

Yet still they opted to put themselves and their families through the grief, hassle and humiliation of a gruelling campaign that was almost certainly doomed to failure. Still, I suppose they’ve each got the consolation prize of a severance payment somewhere north of 60 grand and a handsome pension to look forward to.

Most of them also have option of returning to the farms, pubs, legal practices or teaching jobs from whence they came.

It will be interesting to see how many of them step off the political stage once and for all, though. Few ever manage to stay away completely, at least not voluntarily.

Frankly, I’d have more respect for them if they simply disappeared off i nto the sunset and slipped i nto taxpayer-funded retirement.

In the vast majority of cases, though, their default setting is always to come back for more.

The poster boy for politicians who just can’t let go is, of course, Michael McDowell. One of the most amusing sights of the past decade was when he announced his retirement from politics on live television after losing his seat in the 2007 general election.

I thought it was an extraordinary display of petulance from a man who clearly outed himself as a bad loser.

Given the he has the air of someone who believes he was born to rule, though, the chances of him remaining outside the political arena in the long term were always slim.

For more than five years now, this column has been predicting the great man’s return to public life. None of this was rocket science, incidentally.

It was obvious from his various pronouncements that – as I wrote at one point – he was clearly itching to return to the parliamentary fray, despite his claims to the contrary.

The biggest clue came when he aligned himself with a group that was campaigning against Enda Kenny’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to abolish the Seanad. So the news that he has put his name forward as a candidate in the Seanad elections came as no great surprise to me.

After nine long years without his reassuring presence in the Oireachtas, he clearly feels we have suffered enough. Besides, why should the whole country be punished because of the stupidity of ungrateful voters in the old Dublin South-East constituency?

I have no idea why Mr McDowell chose this particular moment for his great comeback, although there might be a hint in some remarks he made 17 months ago.

Back then, he wrote: ‘It seems to me that the potential is there for a movement that could deliver 20 or 25 TDs in the next Dáil – politically reformist, socially liberal and economically proenterprise – which would be a dynamic component in our next government.’

INTERESTING, no? Given the disparate make-up of the 32nd Dáil, perhaps he senses an opportunity f or hi mself. Another election could be in the offing within months, so securing a berth in the Seanad could proved to be a useful springboard.

To be f air, Michael McDowell’s involvement in politics has never struck me as being motivated by personal advancement or gain. His earning power in the Law Library is probably multiples of anything he is ever likely to make in Leinster House.

No, his desire to ‘serve’ the public is based on the unswerving self-belief that he knows better than everyone else. He thinks he is smarter than the rest of us. Perhaps he is, but there isn’t much in his political CV to suggest so. The main thing he will be remembered for as a legislator is his well-meaning but naive attempt to tackle our bingedrinking culture by introducing new licences for European-style café-bars.

Needless to say, that proposal hardly got out of the starting blocks before it was scuppered by the Dáil’s powerful publican lobby.

We also ought to remember that Mr McDowell served as a senior cabinet minister under Bertie Ahern. He would no doubt claim that the Progressive Democrats’ presence in Government Buildings brought some kind of restraint to the Ahern era, but he is still guilty by association.

Nor should we forget that he initially played it very softly-softly when questions first surfaced about Mr Ahern’s personal finances. Here’s what I wrote about that back in January 2011: ‘Of course, he later claimed that he had been “deceived” by the slippery former Fianna Fáil leader, but if that’s the case then more fool him.’

Incidentally, the occasion of Michael McDowell’s ill-tempered ‘retirement’ in 2007 wasn’t the first time he’d been rejected by the voters.

No, they had thrown him out on his ear on two previous occasions. And yet he still can’t stop himself from coming back for more.

He’s dead. But he doesn’t know it.