On the campaign trail around the country, there is an absence of buzz and a palpable feeling of cynicism towards candidates, with arrogance and waste the recurring themes, writes Kathy Sheridan
To some of us out in RTÉ on Thursday night, it was the post-debate scene that told the story. As Bertie rushed away to steady the troops back at Fianna Fáil election headquarters at Treasury Buildings, a spectral PJ Mara hovered, telling anyone in earshot that his boss had won "by a country mile. Of course". People nodded politely, but no one was clamouring to hear more. Il Duce's right-hand man, lyricist of the 2002 smash, "Showtime!", looked like a man who had lost his mojo.
In the Fine Gael hospitality room, by contrast, Enda Kenny and his handlers lingered contentedly, too drained, too choked with gratitude to the election gods, to rise and break the spell. The air was thick with relief. After weeks of warnings that the contest was his to lose, they were toasting not victory, but basic survival.
Never mind the issues. The movement for change was evident on the way in, when he resisted such classic, turn-off Enda-isms as the silly thumbs-up and the lame clenched fist. The clean, vigorous leap from the Mercedes, the jacket slung over the shoulder, were an echo of Blair in his pomp. His few words to the media conveyed quiet confidence with a dash of humility, acknowledging the useful sparring practice gained at "impromptu press conferences" around the country in recent weeks.
Now here they were, two hours further on, and they had not lost. To be sure, the thrusting new leader hadn't landed the crushing blow he should have landed on the grizzled old-timer, but heck, the show was still on the road. After all, here was a man who had written his concession speech during the 2002 count in Mayo, before the magic of proportional representation came to his rescue.
Yesterday, a worldly, middle-aged woman mused that the rather spooky, Germanic-looking gent on the (German-made) Fine Gael posters was beginning to grow on her. "The thing is, I'm not sure why. Is it because I'm starting to think of him as a taoiseach rather than a prissy head prefect? You know what power does . . . " By contrast, for all Bertie's tombstone grin and fighting form, dread hangs around Fianna Fáil like a shroud. For one friendly Fianna Fáil regular at Treasury Buildings (or Meltdown Manor, as some denizens have christened it), "it's like going to someone's house where something really terrible has happened . . . and everyone has been locked in for a long time. The campaign isn't really functioning. Something's just not working. They're coming across as an old, tired team who've had their day".
The marvellous celebratory set-pieces that have conferred a deserved place among the greats on Bertie Ahern, and were seen to be brilliantly strategic in their timing, have also associated him, however, with Tony Blair's unseemly clinging to power and interminable farewell. Blair had to concede, finally, that 10 years is enough. Clinton is gone because the American people hold that no president is worth more than two terms. That leaves Bertie, battling gamely for a third. Fear is the only tactic in town now, says a Fianna Fáiler, "i.e. 'The Left is nigh'".
If anyone saw it coming, it was Fianna Fáil, with its continuous, streamlined private polls. The great positivist himself, PJ Mara, concedes that at this stage in previous elections they would have been "slightly more ahead". He was never convinced by the extent of the famous Fianna Fáil "bounce-back" in the national polls (the ones that sent the opposition scuttling for cover) at the height of Bertiegate in the autumn. This is because he never believed they were coming from such a low base in the first place, he says; but it puts another complexion on that fabled public mood swing.
Two months ago, a well-known Fianna Fáiler, chatting about the party's electoral prospects (and who probably had access to the private polls), tore a page from a notebook and wrote down a figure: "Hold on to that. See if I'm right." It read "62".
If it materialises, it spells meltdown, 19 seats gone south. This week, after hitting the canvass and what he called "the semi-final of the Eurovision" (the four smaller parties' debate on Prime Time on Wednesday), he texted a message: "Remember: 62."
Nonetheless, he insists that such a result will not mean a change of government. And, despite admitted daily doorstep floggings about health and education, he refuses to accept that it might be related to government performance. "No, it's more a fatigue out there with the whole election. It's been going on for so long. When you think about it, only one of those parties in the Wednesday debate was a real political party 10 years ago. Now, in some constituencies you can have eight different parties sticking stuff in the door, ringing the bell, calling back several times in some cases - and that's been going on for several years."
He wouldn't be the first to note the absence of "buzz" around this election, although some would question his analysis of the public mood.
Those of us trawling outlying constituencies with the campaign's foot-soldiers in recent weeks have struggled to reconcile the shrieking high drama at Dublin campaign headquarters, with the rather sour, detached mood of the voters. Of all the campaign slogans, the one that seemed to catch that mood (if not the grammar), was Labour's: "But, are you happy?" "Voters are taking the economy for granted; that's our problem," wailed our friendly Fianna Fáiler. In fact, it's worse than that. The repetition of the word "economy" makes many want to reach for a gun.
Over and over on the doorstep, candidates were greeted by the kind of aneurysm-inducing old biddy who folds her arms and smirks: "There y'are. What are you going to do for me?," and when asked what she wants, is momentarily stumped before remembering the pothole outside (often located on her private property). But there were a hundred genuine variations of that, where people had no specific complaint but clearly needed to hear words of . . . What? Reassurance? The problem with the boom years is that, because of the SUVs, cobble-lock driveways and multiple foreign holidays, they are working harder, growing more fearful and have more to lose. The sense that someone somewhere is always pulling a stroke at their expense is pervasive.
Bertiegate of itself is not enough to sink the Fianna Fáil ship; it's just another thread in the blanket of corrosion. In Cashel, a businesswoman and Fianna Fáil voter, forced to work three menial jobs to support her two children while being pursued through the courts for details of her husband's whereabouts after his desertion 20 years ago, railed against the "cheek of Bertie in his big Government job . . . saying he needed a dig-out, using his separation as an excuse to take money from businessmen. Separated and divorced people will never forgive him for that."
In Castleisland, Co Kerry, where a ferocious public protest featuring the slogan "No bypass, No votes" suddenly saw €20 million swing their way for a bypass, the reaction was less gratitude, more cynicism: "Mystery isn't it, how they conjured up all that money just before an election, when they wouldn't hear of it before?," shrugged a shopkeeper.
In the soundest of Fianna Fáil areas, suspicion crackled too around the decision to hold the election on a Thursday. The issue raised its head repeatedly, as parents complained that, having imbued their children with the duty to vote, they were almost being disenfranchised.
Waste and arrogance were constant themes. In one small area with a water problem, a big Fianna Fáil activist rang his local TD (who is also a Minister) at 9am to explain the problem. The Minister's response was to chastise him for ringing at that hour of the morning. The activist then rang the Fine Gael TD, who was on the doorstep within the hour, mopping up the votes.
As the stump speeches became entombed in numbers - beds, gardaí, teachers - and meaningless statistics, people answering the doors looked jaded, cynical, wary or spitting mad. What often followed was a tale of horror about health, school places, or three-hour commutes, often with a curse on the heads of those who wasted pots of public money on electronic voting and management consultants. One quoted Noel Dempsey's famous riposte about the €50 million electronic voting project - that "it wasn't a lot of money . . . relatively speaking".
In Tralee, a woman said she was "sick" of a boom that was synonymous with Croesus-like builders, privatisation, and slavery to consumption, money and the marketplace. She wanted someone to articulate her fears about the aftermath of the boom, "someone man enough" to envisage an Ireland when it was no longer "the world's pet economic miracle", but a place still standing, self-assured, able to mind its own.
"It's a ruddy priest they need," muttered one rightly enervated, left-ish candidate when another woman said that she didn't think Kenny was "strong enough to take it over and fight the vested interests".
The Fianna Fáiler, drawing on years of Dáil experience, dog-weary and bruised from rants about health, education and Asbos, nodded ruefully and embarked on a rant of his own. "One thing I've learned is that for most people, everything is everyone else's responsibility, it's never their own . . . So when their children are 'knacker-drinking' [ in fields], snorting cocaine, or throwing stones at an old woman's windows, it's not their fault. It's the Government's." He tells a story about a young teenager found senseless with drink, who was locked up overnight by gardaí; when her father arrived at the station the next morning, his first priority was to retrieve the six-pack the gardaí had taken from her.
Meanwhile, at leader level, the breathless reporting continued as the caravans pursued them around the country, Kenny visibly growing in confidence, "but not quite answering the big question", as one man put it in Westmeath. "Has he the balls to take on the nurses, or the publicans, or the developers? Has he Bertie's skills in managing a consensus in coalition? I don't know. I want a change. Ten years is too long. It makes them fat and arrogant. But I'm nearly afraid . . . I mean what's Bertie done wrong that we'd get rid of him?"
The Bertie circus took off in parts, but only in parts. Charles Haughey used to describe Bertie's popularity as the third miracle of Fatima, but this time around it was more subdued. Daily footage of Bertie being mobbed by idolatrous voters around the country suggests that little has changed since the frenetic, royal progress of 1997 and 2002. But it has.
Take the morning this week - the day after his historic address to the British Houses of Parliament - when he arrived to snip the ribbon at a youth information centre on Meath Street in Dublin's Liberties.
This is true-blue Dub territory, scene of a lifelong love-in with "our Bertie". The Liffey Twirlers, schoolgirl majorettes from Oliver Bond flats neatly turned out in matching tracksuits and Fianna Fáil baseball caps, formed a cute reception committee. It was a thank-you to local TD Michael Mulcahy, a stalwart supporter, but their football-style chant for Bertie - "We love you Bertie, we do/ We love you Bertie, we do" - provided just the right fun, upbeat buzz for the cameras. A couple of minutes, max, inside the office, and we were away again to another belting chorus of "We love you Bertie, we do/Bertie. We. Love. You."
As we trudged up the nearly empty street in the drizzle, a distracted-looking Bertie racing ahead of his mob, stopping to shake a hand here, race into a shop there, it was suddenly evident that without the media and assorted escorts there would be no mob. Every time he stopped to shake a voter's hand, three camera crews, a riot of photographers, a mass of radio reporters and a clatter of print journalists piled in to catch any gems from the lips of shaker and shakee.
We are a handler's dream, producing pictures from the same stable as the genius who invented "doughnutting" for solitary speakers in parliament, whereby all his mates crowd around him and the camera may not sweep around to reveal the truth.
To our excitable media mob, add Bertie's plain-clothes Garda escort (two followers and a driver), local TDs, councillors and activists, Fianna Fáil press, campaign staff, advisers and officials from the Taoiseach's office, and hey presto: an impressive Bertie mob for the 6pm news.
It's by no measure a "canvass" as we know it, more a presidential-style swing-by. There is little or no engagement. "How's the hardy man?" "Doin' a bit?" And (a biggie, directed at the local TD) "How's things in [ insert consituency name here]?". Maximum stopping time is 10 minutes. "Ah no, I wouldn't be expecting him to stop and chat," says a woman lovingly, "sure he's more important things to be at than that."
Up at the fountain in the heart of the Liberties, where locals have established a little memory wall to the missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann, he is handed a yellow ribbon to tie to the wrought-iron railings. Josie, Christina, Kay, Anna Rose, Cora and Jenny - all well-informed, alert Liberties "girls" in their 60s and 70s - beam with pride and affection as if it was their own fine son come to call.
So what is so fabulous about him? "Ah, he has charisma - like John Kennedy and Bill Clinton," says one, and they all nod in agreement. "I think it's the poor face he puts on," giggles another. But surely there's more to him than that? They start discussing the good things that have happened to their lives over the years: equal pay, contraception, fairer taxes.
Then Christina says, almost in a whisper, "But we do feel we were let down by Bertie. All that stuff about the money for the house. I think what was really annoying was the excuses, they kinda made you feel that he thinks we're all fools." No one demurs, though they look sheepish. "But we still love him," says one. "He's still our Bertie, though we are a bit disappointed."
Then, one by one, they start to attribute credit for the good things, where they reckon it's due. "That came from Europe," says one about equal pay. "That was civil servants," another says about something else.
"Things are better now," says one. "But what is poverty? Poverty is relative. What good is a big new car outside the door without health and education? And the poor kids haven't a chance to get their own place. I can't understand why landlords can buy up places like they're doing around here, getting richer and richer renting them out to the kids, rather than the Government building affordable housing".
Meanwhile, two out of the five women confess worriedly that they've had to lapse their VHI because they can no longer afford it: "All our lives paying into it, and just when you need it they won't even give you a reduction."
So will they vote for Bertie this time? Four of the five say they will, some with reservations. "It's not really Bertie, it's the party. Dev had a place of honour in our house," says one. And they all agree when another says: "And you'd have to give him - and Tony - credit for the North. That will really be a point for him." But Christina is looking mutinous. "I'm voting Sinn Féin . . . it's what you'd call a protest vote," she says. "A lot of young people are doing that," says Josie thoughtfully.
Down in Meath Street, people are glad to have met him, just because he's Bertie. "I love him, yeah. Because . . . because he's a Dub - like ourselves," says a woman. "He's down-to-earth, just a nice man," says a man outside his shop. Unconditional love.
Whether it's enough to pull him through on Thursday is anyone's guess.