I COULD never figure it out. For years as I travelled around the country with Des O'Malley, earnest well meaning men and women would go out of their way to engage him.
They simply had to tell the then PD leader how much they admired him, applauded his courage and principles and wished him well with the new party.
"So you'll be voting for us then?" Des would ruefully probe. "Ah, well you see, I'm Fianna Fail/Fine Gael/Labour all my life and I couldn't change at this stage," came the unblinking replies.
It was an experience we encountered week in, week out; one year after the other. It's a dilemma that still besets the Progressive Democrats.
How else can one explain Mary Harney's consistent Number 1 spot in the party leaders' chart, and the "party tirelessly flogging its trade in Leinster House and the media only, to find double digit support remains stubbornly elusive?
As a terrace fan now of Irish politics, I marvel at the party's consistently good Dail and media performances, especially the indefatigable Mary Harney. Hard to believe at times that it has only eight TDs and two senators at Leinster House.
I believe the failure to command greater popular support part reflects how hard it is for a new political party to take root in the Irish political landscape. I've previously observed that whereas the PDs have a natural constituency, they don't ye command a native constituency.
Natural in the sense of people who want more "liberal, European style politics and the economic freedom to keep more of what they earn and not be fiscally mugged by an over reaching State. Native in the sense of learning your political allegiance at, your mother's knee or your father's elbow, and being almost genetically stamped with it.
Simply put, the party has not been around long enough to bask in the comfort of such guaranteed support. That is a product of age. But that's something no party can sit back and wait for because in politics the sell by date is always now.
This means the PDs must grapple with two interrelated conundrums. An electorate that admires and respects the party but which - date at least - refuses to vote for it in significant numbers. And the absence of a my party right or wrong support base sufficient to elect comparative unknowns in next year's general election.
So how are the PDs to overcome these handicaps? Taking the latter point first, the fickleness of popular support for the PDs means they must present the electorate with high profile winning glow candidates as much as possible.
But securing such candidates is as difficult as Mick McCarthy finding Alan Shearer type striker with an Irish granny. Nor is it a problem - unique to the PDs. It is just as much a headache for all the parties, large and small, in Dail Eireann. This tells us that, despite the media hype about the great time our politicians have, anyone who seriously ponders the job realises quickly that it is two thirds dog's life to one third limelight.
For the PDs, then, there remains a long, long way from Clare this weekend to seats at the Cabinet table after next year's election. No one knows, that better than Mary Harney. But there is also the real prospect of the PDs holding the ace in the political pack for that campaign.
The really elusive prize for all parties come election 1997 is the 20 percent don't knows of recent polls - that growing, politically promiscuous slice of the Irish electorate. In 1987, the PDs, in their first election, caught their eye. In 1989, having donned the economic hairshirt, Fianna Fail was the main beneficiary. In the 1992 general election, Labour besotted them and in the Euro elections of 1994, it was the Green Party's turn.
Next year, Mary Harney will make history as the first woman to lead a mainstream political party in an Irish general election. Given her common sense, common touch and courageous ability, she is as likely as anyone to sweep those footloose voters off their feet.
