Editing Garret FitzGerald (section)

== Early political life ==
FitzGerald was eager to enter politics. Despite his pro-Treaty roots, several members of [[Fianna Fáil]], including Charles Haughey and [[Michael Yeats]], suggested that he should join that party.{{efn|FitzGerald stated this in an interview with [[Ursula Halligan]] on the [[TV3 (Ireland)|TV3]] programme ''The Political Party''.{{Full citation needed|date=February 2021}}}} Ultimately, FitzGerald made his entry into party politics under the banner of Fine Gael, of which his father had been a founding member. He attached himself to the party's liberal wing, which rallied around the Just Society programme written by [[Declan Costello]]. FitzGerald was elected to [[Seanad Éireann]] for the [[Industrial and Commercial Panel]] in 1965<ref name=oireachtas_db>{{cite web|url=https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/members/member/Garrett-Fitzgerald.S.1965-06-23/|title=Garret FitzGerald|work=Oireachtas Members Database|access-date=30 May 2010|date=5 November 1992|archive-date=7 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181107185646/https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/members/member/Garrett-Fitzgerald.S.1965-06-23|url-status=live}}</ref> and soon built up his political profile. FitzGerald was elected to Dáil Éireann at the [[1969 Irish general election|1969 general election]], for the [[Dublin South-East]] constituency,<ref name=elecs_irl>{{cite web|url=http://electionsireland.org/candidate.cfm?ID=2881|title=Garret FitzGerald|work=ElectionsIreland.org|access-date=30 May 2010|archive-date=21 February 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110221164336/http://electionsireland.org/candidate.cfm?id=2881|url-status=live}}</ref> the same year he obtained his PhD for a thesis later published under the title "Planning in Ireland". He became an important figure almost immediately in the parliamentary party, and his liberal ideas were seen as a counterweight to the conservative leader, [[Liam Cosgrave]]. The difference in political outlook and FitzGerald's ambitions for the Fine Gael leadership resulted in profound tensions{{Citation needed|date=April 2007}} between the two men. In his leadership address to the 1972 Fine Gael [[Ardfheis]] in Cork, Cosgrave referred to the "mongrel foxes" who should be rooted out of the party,{{Citation needed|date=April 2007}} a reference seen by many as an attack on FitzGerald's efforts to unseat him as leader.

FitzGerald was an opponent of the US bombing of [[North Vietnam]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=McNamara |first=Robert |title=Irish Perspectives on the Vietnam War |journal=Irish Studies in International Affairs |volume=14 |pages=75–94 |year=2003 |jstor=30001965 |s2cid=153710978 |doi=10.3318/ISIA.2003.14.1.75}}</ref>