WHEN RTE makes the mini-series - working title, When All is Said and Dunne - I want to be the scriptwriter. Some of the scenes are already sketched out.
We start with a close-up of three bank drafts sliding out of the pocket of a pair of gaudy golf slacks, caught by a golf-gloved hand just as they're about to fall, and stuffed back in. The camera pans out to reveal a big golfer on the phone, agreeing to "drop around in just a few minutes". Then we cut to the same golfer being admitted to a mansion architecturally not unlike a baby Custom House. Close-ups of weak tea in delicate china cups, dialogue about this and that, finishing with the hand over of the bank drafts. The final line of thanks to the big guy is already written.
Lest it be suggested that this scenario is a trivialisation of what has been revealed in the McCracken tribunal, let me point out that prime ministerial solvency as soap opera is precisely how the general public has accommodated the evidence of the last week. There has been a fascination with the inside-out Robin Hoodism of Ben Dunne. Members of the public talked on radio vox pops, wondering aloud at the Dunne tradition of doing the toughest deal possible with their workers to save the last penny on wages, in contrast to the top man at the time within the organisation allegedly lashing out £200,000 to an already rich man because the rich man's personality on the day was less than ebullient.
I can't remember who said: "We laugh that we may not weep", but this week has put a new gloss on the saying for me. Now, we trivialise that we may not weep. Weep for the broad spectrum damage being done to the public perception of all politicians by the alleged actions of one. Weep for the loss of faith in all of our systems engendered by the touted possibility that the man at the centre of the storm will, like Brer Rabbit, lie, low, say nuthin' - and leave an undispersed and undeserved cloud over the political party he led.
BLUNTLY, if the allegations made by Ben Dunne about handing over large sums of money directly or indirectly to C.J. Haughey are wrong, he owes it to the party he led - and to the public to go to the tribunal to set the record straight.
On the other hand, it seems to me the belief within both Fianna Fail and the media that the tribunal will leave Fianna Fail's election campaign in rag order is driven by panic rather than logic.
It should not be damaging to Bertie Ahern. There is a widespread belief that the new leader has never been involved in "stuff like that". When the issue first surfaced, Ahern made it clear to the Fianna Fail front bench that if any of them had been involved in stuff like that, they'd better speak now because he wasn't having it. He had the same strong message for the members of the parliamentary party. When the identity of the recipient of the £1.3 million became less shadowy, Ahern told the ard fheis that past, present or future front bench or back bench, he wouldn't tolerate it.
The only disadvantage Ahern has at this point is posed by personalities perhaps too easily portrayed as linking him with the mindset of previous administrations. Radical thinkers would suggest he'd have done better to purge the past completely. Those close to him would argue that you don't throw out proven performers just because they come with well-known names and occasional negative connotations attached to them.
THE received wisdom suggests that the evidence given at the tribunal will do Fianna Fail untold damage during the election. This ignores the way real people (as opposed to politicians and journalists, who have a necessarily restricted view) are interpreting it. The fact is that by mid-week, people were beginning to be bored.
More to the point. The Irish public has always regarded C.J. Haughey as a once-off: a unique figure of medieval power, intrigue and complexity, surrounded by mystery and money, protected by populism and cleverness and the well-timed one-liner. So now, seven years after he left politics, they're going to extrapolate a negative judgment from the tea party incident and apply it to, say, the Fianna Fail candidate in Galway West? Some chance.
The funny thing is that a few years ago, the wiseacres in Fianna Fail and outside it talked about the core vote and the grass-roots, but nowadays, nobody talks about anything but the floating voter and purports to know precisely what the floating voter will and will not tolerate.
Most of the theories about the floating voter start from an assumption that he or she is a brainheaded bimbo buyable by one stroke, losable by one sentence. The floating voter, by definition, does not come with a party tattoo. They are attracted to vote for people and parties they find interesting. The single most likely outcome of the current controversy - given the possibility that Michael Lowry, former "best friend in all the world of the Taoiseach", misled Dail Eireann is that the floating voter will decide that all parties are tainted by sleaze.
The sad thing is that the lethal long-term consequences of this view are being forgotten by politicians, whose immediate imperative is to get themselves a few minutes of positive airtime. Some Government speakers have resorted to the almost racist approach, suggesting that in some way Fianna Fail are almost genetically disposed to dishonesty - and then sneering at the resultant FF fury as "hysterical".
It is not hysterical to be enraged at being tarred, absolutely without justification, by association with behaviour one despises. But Fianna Fail will need to cool down, if it is not to contribute to the distaste of the floating voter, who now feels not only that all politicians are corrupt, but that they're self-absorbed as well.