The PDs looked forward while being very pleased about their past at a 20th anniversary dinner in Dublin on Saturday, reports Mark Brennock
Photographers ushered Des O'Malley to the front of a group of PD founders, Ministers and other luminaries outside the Burlington ballroom as the Progressive Democrats' 20th anniversary dinner was about to start.
One gave him a champagne bottle and suggested he open it for the cameras. "You'd think I'd just won a race," he said just a little sourly as he thrust the bottle into the hands of a PD handler.
Des O'Malley's curious awkwardness when in the public eye, apparent throughout the past 20 years, was evident again on Saturday as he spoke to his 1,000-member fan base seated at some 100 tables.
Before his address there were a couple of history videos - the dole queues and emigration boats disappearing as the PDs rose and rose - with the pop music of the last two decades used to mark the progression of time. As the film showed Dessie retiring from the party leadership, Whitney Houston sang I Will Always Love You. How he must have cringed.
"The PDs and Ryanair have a lot in common," Dessie remarked, no doubt causing an "oh dear" moment for those whose job it is to hone the party's message. "Each of them is deeply unpopular with the political establishment, and each has managed a measure of success."
He recalled the exhilaration of the early party meetings in 1985 and 1986, praised Mary Harney's role in putting women on the political map, marvelled at Michael McDowell's talent, energy and ability and paid tribute to Bobby Molloy.
He took a swipe at one of the PDs' conceptual enemies, "the dead hand of the State", and warned of possible dire consequences of the national obsession with property investment - the most unproductive use of money, he said.
The party's head of communications Ian Noctor took the stage and announced grace before meals. It was all quite general ecumenical stuff about giving thanks and so on - not the sort of text that would result from a cosy phone call to All Hallows.
The violinist kept a straight face as she struck up with the theme from Titanic, giving colour writers such obvious lines that they need not detain us here. We had got through the Classic Caesar Salad with Crisp Smoked Bacon before Mary Harney got up to speak. At this point Des had gone outside for a smoke.
Mary Harney noted that she too had something in common with Ryanair's Michael O'Leary: "Both of us have acquired a spouse in the last five years. He's had more time though. He's had the time to acquire a son called Matthew. I'm contemplating that with Brian," she said, in reference to her husband.
She told stories of Dessie, and how he had recoiled when the election slogan "Dessie Can Do It" was revealed to him, just as he had recoiled from the champagne popping photocall earlier.
Then came beef or salmon, wine and, well, more wine. As the time approached midnight Michael McDowell opened his speech with un-PD-like modesty, asserting only that the party's first 20 years had "coincided" with the era in which Ireland had been economically transformed into a model state. The more traditional PD formulation is to assert that the party's first 20 years was in fact the cause of this transformation.
His evocation of the brutality of Provo atrocities and his embrace of politics as being about more than the limited economism often ascribed to the PDs ("we need to build a self-confident, open identity . . . to develop Ireland in a way . . . that distinguishes a society from a social and economic space") were McDowell at his rhetorical and unorthodox best.
His distortion of the options facing voters - suggesting that a Government without the PDs in it must of necessity include the Greens, Sinn Féin, "left Independents" or others defined by the PDs as lunatics - was McDowell at his propagandist best. Finally his assertion that the PDs must aim to more than double their seats and have four Cabinet places left them all giddy with excitement as midnight and yet more wine approached.
The Shennanigans then gave us a series of traditional songs - Take Her Up To Monto and the like. Hearing this kind of thing, a couple of PD handlers grew anxious. However, the music, like the evening's judicious mix of nostalgia and forward-looking speechifying, was very judiciously chosen.