Strange things are happening in our times, as a seasoned campaigner used to say during those old-fashioned elections before candidates were all neat and clean and well advised by party managers, writes Dick Walsh
But, in spite of the managers and their highly paid advisers, strange things are happening still.
There are reports from around the country of a purposeful man who shows up unannounced, usually at shopping centres, and darts from one bewildered customer to the next with a fixed smile on his face.
"Hiya, hiya," he mutters. "How's it goin'? "
But he never waits for an answer and no one knows what he stands for or why his own answer to every question is a brisk: "It's not a resignin' matter."
It was what he said when someone complained about Jim McDaid calling people who took their own lives "selfish bastards" and even Cabinet colleagues found it shocking, especially as McDaid is both a Minister and a doctor.
No one knows what the glad-hander stands for, though he promised yesterday (in an echo of the abortion referendum campaign) to have 100,000 Fianna Fáilers out campaigning for it in the next fortnight.
It can't be better health services because when he was shown the photograph of the week - Michael Noonan standing in a hospital in Mullingar that remains empty five years after completion - he had nothing to say.
It was the picture of the week because health, public services and related issues are central to the election.
Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party say it's about the quality of life and how to make this a fairer society.
They want to debate these issues with the Taoiseach. Bertie Ahern, with a glazed look and arms extended, wants to avoid these issues as he skips from car-park to car-park and from shop to shop.
Even when the Attorney General compared his taste in self-advertisement to Ceausescu's, Ahern's only response was to mutter that competition in Michael McDowell's constituency must be hotting up.
And when Fine Gael and Labour leaders take encouragement from the latest Irish Times/MRBI poll, he stops short of wishing them well, taking care to insist that it doesn't look as if Fianna Fáil can win an overall majority.
Des O'Malley has suggested that this would be the worst of electoral results. McDowell repeats the warning. It's at the core of the Opposition's case.
But Ahern's supporters within the party and closet admirers outside cannot resist the temptation to speculate.
They prefer the polls and commentaries that pay more attention to appearance than to achievement.
For serious comment they opt for a simple recital of economic growth and job-creation since 1997, without as much as a nod in the direction of earlier governments or a wink at imbalance in favour of the rich.
In the meantime, Ahern will rely on personal appeal and his refusal to take part in open debate with Noonan, Quinn, Dukes or Rabbitte - or to answer those in the media who are likely to stand up to him.
Fianna Fáil has always emphasised the identification of party with nation and of leader with party. Which explains the importance its strategists attach to slogans glorifying the leader of the day.
Séamus Brennan was invited while he was still the party's general secretary to supply an appropriate slogan which would fit into the series: Up Dev, Let Lemass Lead On and We're backing Jack.
Since Haughey was the leader of the day, he thought Chance It With Charlie might fit the bill. It didn't and, after a few memorable rows with the Boss, Brennan ceased to be general secretary.
If the party is still in the market for slogans, and in view of the Taoiseach's long career among the accident prone how about Botch It With Bertie?
This is a government which some had thought capable of weathering any storm since it had come through the Burke and Lawlor affairs, to all intents and purposes without damage to Fianna Fáil or its leader.
Now the ghosts of five ostensibly successful years follow Bertie Ahern and his colleagues on what they'd expected to be a triumphal electoral trail.
Commentators who had enjoyed Charlie McCreevy thumbing his nose at the European Commission, the European Central Bank and fellow finance ministers began to have second thoughts. Some of these commentators were to be heard on The Last Word the other night.
The economy that had left the rest of Europe - ah, why be modest, the rest of the world - green with envy was beginning to look shaky, they agreed.
Some of the budgetary carry-on was definitely open to suspicion.
But the Europeans knew we were above board. (Didn't they?) In any case we were so small as to be, well, insignificant on the European stage. They'd make allowances.
The first week of the election campaign ended with Fianna Fáil's friends in the media thanking their lucky stars that discussion had been confined to the economy and to areas of public finance which the public couldn't follow.
What the friends of Fianna Fáil didn't grasp was that some of the distractions the public have been enjoying since the phoney war began have been as damaging as the real thing.
Lawlor kept reappearing in the headlines until the election was called.
Discussions about north Kerry and Sligo Leitrim couldn't avoid Denis Foley and John Ellis.
And there, on a street in Castlebar, were Padraig Flynn and Beverley to welcome the Taoiseach to the west as Padraig had once welcomed him to Brussels. Lest we forget.
We'll all be ruined, says Hanrahan, before the year is out.