Bertie Ahern has much in common with Napoleon. Like the great French leader he knows the importance of having lucky generals to fight his wars. None of his commanders is luckier than Mr McCreevy, the Minister for Finance.
When he took office in June 1997, the Co Kildare TD inherited the healthiest set of Government books in the State's history.The Exchequer was in surplus and the economy growing at a record pace. Mr McCreevy was able to do something that previous holders of his office were only able to dream about: he could actually make policy rather than just fight fires.
The result has been several ground-breaking initiatives, the most long-lasting of which will be the individualisation of the tax system and the move to tax credits. His legacy will also include the National Pension Reserve Fund and the Special Savings Investment Accounts.
As the economy turns and his options narrow, Mr McCreevy's real stroke of luck has turned out to be the anonymity of his opponents on the opposition benches. It is fair to question whether the the average citizen - if stopped on the street - would be able to name the Labour or Fine Gael finance spokesmen, never mind give an example of how they had recently bested Mr McCreevy.
Just for the record they are Mr Derek McDowell, the Dublin Labour TD, and Mr Jim Mitchell, who also doubles as Fine Gael's deputy leader. Before the ousting of John Bruton as leader, the finance brief was held by Mr Michael Noonan, current leader of Fine Gael.
So what have deputies McDowell, Mitchell and Noonan been up to as the Irish economic story has played itself out over the last four and bit years? No doubt they have been busy, but they have singularly failed to make any lasting dents in Mr McCreevy's armour. To be fair to them, it was always going to be difficult to score hits when the economy was booming. But they failed to really capitalise on Mr McCreevy's Budget day own-goals such as taxing credit unions.
Let's look at their records, courtesy of The Irish Times archive. Mr McDowell has appeared in some 304 news stories - or six times a month - between the 1997 election and last week. His name only appears in the same story as the Minister for Finance 157 times, which is a much less impressive three times a month. Not what you would describe as political heavy-lifting.
The most recent occasion they appeared in the same story was on September 6th, more than a month and half ago, when Mr McDowell commented on the Exchequer returns saying: "As a result of this Government's mishandling of the economy we have little to show for the unprecedented level of economic growth." Mr McCreevy's response was not recorded but the blow was obviously not mortal.
We have to go back to July 4th to find the next occasion when the Labour spokesman's name appears in print beside his opposite number in the Government. On this occasion they crossed swords over the important issue of how party leader's allowances will be audited. We can draw our own conclusion on what this says about Mr McDowell's priorities. Before this titanic clash, the two had exchanged views on dormant bank accounts on June 28th.
Mr Mitchell's record is even less impressive. Since taking on the mantle of finance spokesman from Michael Noonan in February he has made it to the news pages on 145 times, a chunky 16 times a month. He appeared in tandem with the finance minister a mere 20 times which works out at less than 1.24 times a month, making Mr McDowell look positively industrious by comparison.
Mr Noonan's record while he held the finance brief is scarcely any more impressive and I will spare you the details. For completeness we should note that Mr McCreevy made it into the paper 1,045 times.
Interesting though they maybe, do these figures tell us very much? Maybe they just reflect a bias on the paper's part towards Mr McCreevy, although few people in politics would support this thesis.
Obviously what Mr McCreevy says is going to command more column inches because he is the minister of the day and the comments of his opposite numbers are effectively filtered for relevance. The number of times Mr Mitchell and Mr McDowell get their names in the paper is but a small fraction of the number of times they have made comments or sent in press releases. But it is a reflection of the newsworthiness of their views and how hard they have tried to get them across. This in turn says something about the level of research they carry out and the thought that goes into their comments. It is also a reflection on their work rate. So the above figures are at best a crude and flawed measure of the two opposition spokesmen's effectiveness, but still they are instructive in the absence of any alternative. The fact of the matter is that the two men have failed to land an effective punch on Mr McCreevy in the last six months or more.
They have failed to do this at a time when the Government has been more exposed than ever over its economic policies. An election is just around the corner and the Governemnt's economic forecasts are in a mess and its Budget plans in disarray. The current estimates have had to be ripped up and the process practically restarted, we are told, as respected economists warn the economy is already in recession. It sounds like something akin to paradise for an opposition finance spokesman, if you could find one.
Crucially, Mr McCreevy now has some hard choices to make in his next Budget. As any politician knows, when you make choices you create losers. When you create losers you have made a gift for your political opponents, if they can capitalise on it. To say that Mr McCreevy is lucky is not to under-rate him and his hard work over the past 41/2 years. Luck is, after all, the meeting of opportunity and a prepared mind. But it is about time Fine Gael and Labour started to make a real effort to bring his winning streak to an end.
jmcmanus@irish-times.ie
