At least there is one fact which cannot be disputed. This is the weirdest, the most extraordinary, yet the longest planned general election campaign in living memory.
There never has been any other like it. The Coalition parties stopped just short of imploding over the weekend. All trust between the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil has been seen to have broken down. Now, the next steps are being put in place to ensure that the issue of the personal finances of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, dominate the second week of the campaign. What was, deservedly, to be the "statesman week", with a historic Northern Ireland Executive being formed tomorrow and the symbolic visit of First Minister, Dr Paisley, accompanying the Taoiseach to the Battle of the Boyne site on Friday, has now been sullied by suspicions of funny money surrounding Mr Ahern's house. Anything, literally anything, could happen.
The PDs couldn't seem to make up their minds on Friday or Saturday whether they were in, or out, of the Government. They wrestled with their conscience and they will be perceived publicly to have allowed pragmatism win out over principle. They are damaged. If the party had called for the Taoiseach to make a comprehensive new statement addressing the radically different accounts of the transactions given to the new PD leader, Michael McDowell, last autumn and the Mahon tribunal recently, that would be a justifiable position. But, instead, they allowed the expectation to be created in the media that they would pull out of government forthwith.
What was illuminating was the breakdown of relations between the PD leader and Taoiseach. Mr McDowell went to journalists - notably the Sunday Independent - to find out what Mr Ahern had told the Mahon tribunal rather than asking Mr Ahern to see the contents of his submission. "It now appears", Mr McDowell said, "that the tribunal has been given a radically different account of the transactions which were the subject of the public controversy last autumn from that which was given to me by the Taoiseach then".
The outcome of weekend developments puts the Taoiseach in an impossible position but it is all of his own making. He knows the truth. He chose the time of the calling of the election. It is difficult to see how he can reconcile the statements he made to the public in the Brian Dobson interview on RTÉ last autumn with his interview with the Mahon tribunal. Mr McDowell said yesterday that the picture given by various parties to the tribunal differed markedly from "that given to me by the Taoiseach last autumn".
Mr Ahern is in a hard place. The public forgave him last autumn for his personal difficulties and his dig-outs from friends in a bad period in his personal life. There is a different story now. Mr McDowell is forcing him to reconcile his stories. That exercise is impossible unless he says that he spun a great one last year.