The first thing people expect of their leaders in time of crisis is reassurance. People need to feel they are safe, that those in charge know what they are doing, that plans are in place, in other words that those elected to lead are competent and sure.
It is precisely for these reasons that Joe Jacob's performance was so serious.
He wasn't made go on air. Few enough outside Wicklow even knew who he was. The choice was his. That fact on its own should have sent warning lights flashing in the Government media unit. They at least should have known that this was emphatically not a case of "cometh the hour, cometh the man".
It takes a certain genius to become a household name in the space of half an hour but that is precisely what Joe managed to do. No advertising campaign could do for iodine tablets in a year what Joe did in 30 minutes and the word "fact sheet" has taken on comic connotations which even the late Dermot Morgan would have envied.
There were two ways of looking at the interview. Those who believe that in the event of a nuclear disaster, the game is up anyway, simply sat back and laughed.
This was Bull Island, Scrap Saturday and Hall's Pictorial Weekly all rolled into one. It was welcome light relief after the gloom of the past fortnight, and if, as Dublin Opinion used say "humour was the safety valve of the nation", then we were all safe.
But that, sadly for Joe Jacob, was merely a subtext. The fact was that the interview scared and angered people, probably in equal proportions. If phone calls to radio shows and newspapers are anything to go by, many mothers in particular were deeply upset. Their fears may be irrational but they are real. Many have direct experience of children upset and traumatised by the television pictures of the attack on America and wanted more than bureaucratic talk of co-ordination, interdepartmental task forces and the like, not to mention iodine tablets and fact sheets.
The anger was even deeper. It was directed at the sheer lack of competence revealed. Micheβl Martin was rushed on to the main evening news for one reason only - to create a sense of competence. He did well, or as well as anyone could do in the circumstances, but already the damage was done.
He did not do so well under tougher questioning from ┴ine Lawlor on Thursday's Morning Ireland. He hit the wrong note entirely when he testily rejected the call for Joe Jacob's resignation saying it would be a "new litmus test" if people were asked to resign because of one bad radio interview.
He missed the point. The interview was the public manifestation of a deeper incompetence, an absence of any sense of reality and an insensitivity to public fears on a fairly major scale.
But to scapegoat Joe Jacob would be unfair. He is a junior minister, and junior ministers do not make policy. With a few exceptions they are given the unglamorous jobs, the chores that mean tedium and no photocalls. Within that framework, Joe Jacob has tried to do a decent job.
What we are seeing now is a scramble to pass the buck among government departments. Noel Dempsey says it has nothing to do with him. Joe Jacob's Minister, Mary O'Rourke, has other worries while the Taoiseach, like the manager of a relegation-threatened club, expresses full confidence in his junior minister.
Joe Jacob will survive this debacle. He is a decent man and if he runs again he will be re-elected. But he will never again be merely a Wicklow figure. His name will not be forgotten, not least by his colleagues in cabinet. People may forget national plans, but iodine tablets will live on.
Joe Jacob's interview wasn't the only touch of unreality this week. The Progressive Democrats' health policy was another first. Where have they been this past four years? Do they leave the cabinet room when health is being discussed? Are there now three health policies - those of Fianna Fβil, PD and the Government?
It was once again a question of having your cake and eating it. If the health policy is not working, then that's a problem for the Government. The PDs have no responsibility for that. They have their own plans. But they will of course stay in Government. Never mind that old claptrap about collective responsibility.
Drapier always gets suspicious when everyone says that one issue is going to be the key to the next election. At the moment everyone says it will be health, and they say that because all parties listen to what their opinion polls tell them and what they tell them is that health is the issue.
Drapier disagrees. Elections do not run along preordained lines. Invariably new issues arise, some out of nowhere. Remember rod licences or Mary Harney's views on single parents.
Drapier will not predict this week what the key issues will be. They may well vary from constituency to constituency and in a worsening economic and security situation questions of real leadership may well surface. All Drapier is saying is that the present concentration on health by all parties may result in each cancelling the other out.
Meanwhile, as the US begins the task of rebuilding itself, we continue to marvel at the resilience and determination of New Yorkers. It is a lesson to us all and puts the current Northern impasse into context.
It may be that progress is being made but the very suggestion that John Taylor might be the chairman of the new Police Authority must suggest David Trimble does not want it to work, while Sinn FΘin's refusal to support that same authority must seriously brings its bona fides into question.
With George W Bush and Tony Blair occupied elsewhere and with Bertie Ahern's eye on the domestic scene, the emphasis now is firmly on the Northern parties to sort out their differences. The rest of the world has enough on its own plate just now.
Finally this week, the death of Kevin Boland. For 16 years he was a dominant figure in Leinster House, as was his father for 25 years before him. And then, almost in a flash, it was all gone. Only a handful of people in today's Leinster House served with Kevin Boland and to most of the younger people he has long been a figure of history.
If Kevin Boland was for you, his support was total, and if he believed in a cause that believe was unflinching. But if he was against you, as Jack Lynch and Fianna Fβil discovered, there were no half-measures, it was a fight to the finish. Kevin Boland lost his fight with the political party his father had helped found and he himself had served. But in the process he never lost his integrity.