GÂDEA - UNGUREANU The little Q&A trick

The satisfaction that PM Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu verbally crushed Mihai Gâdea, during the interview he gave him two days ago, on Antena 3, permeates the pro-government press and the internet.

It is a minor one.

Gâdea crushes himself, every time he goes on TV.

His endless ranting, the rudimentary attempts at manipulation and his rigid thinking (which as I understand it, besides his limited intellectual abilities, is furthered by his education as part of a religious sect), make him a curiosity which is similar to a miasma.

There's nothing to crush about him.

He's so inconsistent, he might as well be gas.

Paradoxically, my disappointment comes from PM Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, who was incoherent, pharisaic, often times hypocritical and even snarky.

"The first way in which we can restart the Romanian economy is consumption", the prime minister said, and, naturally, Gâdea did not even blink and he moved on to other topics.

It would be too much to ask Gâdea to have heard about Keynes and completely absurd to ask him to have heard about the decline of the credibility of Keynesianism, because of the global crisis (did he at least realize the disaster of the Tăriceanu government?, no, that's not the case).

Obviously, Gâdea did not notice that Ungureanu severely self-contradicted himself when he claimed that, when it comes to the six billion Euros in European grants which are at stake, "discussions concerning the economy and taxation lose their importance".

Because according to the statements of the prime-minister, the European grants would be granted for agricultural, cohesive and structural policies.

In other words, for things other than consumption.

When I say that Ungureanu contradicts himself, I knowingly take the risk of considering him as being of good faith, because otherwise, If I believed that he knows what he is talking about when making these statements, then we really do have a problem with him: it would mean that he is deliberately lying to the Europeans about spending the money on policies, and he would actually spend it on consumption to restart the economy.

"The positive effect [of obtaining European money -author's note] will be almost immediate", Ungureanu said.

That sucks.

The effects of policies show up in the long run.

The effects of boosting consumption show up immediately.

After this answer, I felt dizzy when hearing Ungureanu ask with a veiled sarcasm:

"Was the answer not articulate enough?"

Which went right over Gâdea's head.

The explanations of the prime minister concerning the situation of the Medicine Faculty with teaching in Hungarian are just as lousy as the level of rudimentary manipulation which Gâdea usually conducts; the coalition tells him about its political intentions, and he, being the executive, finds the way to implement it, but at the same time, he is autonomous and he can decide by himself, no, really, he is, so he can just make a decision, draw up a draft Government decision, throw it out there and see what happens, so he can't say that early whether he is going to issue the Decision or not.

Ok man, but what does your mind tell you?

It's nice that you're consulting with the nation, but what do you think about it?

Mr. Ungureanu, do you speak Hungarian?

Because if, Heaven forbid!, you end up in an emergency, on the operating table of a doctor graduating from that University of Târgu Mureş where he was taught exclusively in Hungarian and he asks you "Sziv szenvednek?"

What do you do?

You do realize that if you can't answer, you could kick the bucket, don't you?

Has it ever occurred to you?

(Truth be told, the Prime Minister does speak Hungarian).

I for one wasn't impressed at all by the PM's answer concerning his relations with Elena Udrea, that trick by which, under the pretense of providing an example, he claimed that he could very well assume that Mihai Gâdea was doing the bidding of his boss, who is hostile to the government.

I don't get why he spoke about it hypothetically.

Both the attitude of Dan Voiculescu, as well as his abject "personality" are notorious.

Why did he not say it directly?

Perhaps it wouldn't have been "classy"?

A-ha.

That must be what Ungureanu called "desirable political behavior of the generation which Ponta, Gâdea" and himself belong to: "decency, fairness, criticism without invectives, without outbursts of personality".

In other words, "Euro-behavior".

In a movie, I saw that Tony Blair said that if you want to spoil a pleasant thing, you just add the "euro" prefix to it "euro": "euro-money", "euro-food", "euro-sex".

The interview gave us an "euro-Ungureanu".

A guy with a just a dash of superficial logic (by the way, generalization is not a logical error, like the PM said, but rather "illicit generalization" is, because otherwise, inductive processes would lead to false conclusions), a guy with unsupported intellectual pretense, who tries to prove his superiority, at least in the manner he views it.

He ended the interview by being snarky to Mircea Badea, telling him:

"You don't like my style, no problem, you can adapt to it and you will live with it".

It's not that Mircea Badea doesn't deserve a "slap" every now and again, even though he is often witty and makes me laugh, but in that specific conversation, he represented the "average citizen" and he needed to be treated as such.

The response of Prime Minister Ungureanu resembles another, famous one, by Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu: "Romanians have to learn to live with me".

But at least Vîntu is the author of a valuable observation: when you lead a nation, you at least need to have a vision, and that vision needs to be backed by metaphysics.

Ungureanu showed no signs he has any of that, in spite of his studies on Judaism.

The last words spoken by the Prime Minister during the interview, are the ones which make up the title of the article, as they describe him very well: "The little Q&A trick".

This prime minister, who, in his own words, represents an entire generation of youngsters, either missed out on an opportunity to keep his mouth shut, or on the opportunity to tell us something.