As is clear from the detail of the most recent Irish Times/MRBI political opinion poll, Fianna Fail begins its 76th year in existence unassailable as the largest and most important party in the State.
If this now seems obvious, it is certainly not a prediction which could safely have been made at virtually any point in the past 20 years. If one was to go by the hostility towards Fianna Fail, the influence of its detractors, and the seeming political death wish of some individuals within the party itself, one could only have concluded that the Anything But Fianna Fail alliance would pretty soon have its way.
Recall that, for most of the past decade, there has been an almost continuous run of tribunals which for all intents and purposes were established to undermine Fianna Fail. Observe that, during seven of the past 10 years which Fianna Fail has spent in government, the party has been chaperoned in office by a much smaller entity, always controlled by its enemies.
Consider that, during that time also, the other parties have all rung the leadership changes in attempts to find a new formula with which to exploit Fianna Fail's supposed vulnerability. It has all come to nothing. At the end, Fianna Fail continues in government, during the most successful period of our recent history, and continues to attract support from in excess of 40 per cent of the electorate.
If one was to indulge, for a moment, the (obviously) paranoid delusion that what has been under way for the past couple of decades was a conspiracy to remove Fianna Fail from the political stage, or at the very least to immobilise it to the extent that it would die prematurely of natural causes, one would have to conclude that such a conspiracy has been a total failure.
THE Anything But Fianna Fail alliance has failed to convince the Irish electorate of the congenital immorality of Fianna Fail. The tribunals, to the extent that they are political inquisitions, have been a disaster. The chaperoning of Fianna Fail by dint of coalition with its sworn enemies has not worked as was intended. The media hostility has been as the impotent pummelling of a child on the chest of a Sumo wrestler.
There has been no ideological realignment in Irish politics. And now, within a few months of an election, the party with the only hope of leading a government which might exclude Fianna Fail finds itself, having played its last trump, floundering in search of tricks.
Such a scenario was scarcely thinkable 10 years ago, in the euphoria following the Robinson victory, when, if we were to believe even a fraction of the hype, everything was about to be swept away. It was only a matter of time before Dick Spring would be Taoiseach and Fianna Fail required to retreat to the political desert to look anew into its soul.
This reality has implications for journalism as well as for politics. The instrument of political apprehension that is Irish political commentary has signally failed either to predict or influence the drift of Irish political affairs because it has always confused desire and description. Most political commentators are not journalists but activists who, instead of watching what is happening before their eyes, seek to paint scenarios which correspond to their own political fancies.
FOR them, politics is all in the head, and what they write and relate is not observation but a kind of self-arousing pornography based on their own fantasies. Reality goes its merry way, oblivious of their impotent protestations.
But the triumph of Fianna Fail over its detractors has been greater than even this. The notion that Irish political journalism confines itself to observation, or even wishful thinking, is even more fanciful than most of its content. For quite a while now, journalism here has been a central element of the coalition which has pledged itself to the elimination of Fianna Fail, and it has been intimately involved in all efforts to achieve this end.
The tribunals, for example, are media-driven events, designed to create a constant flow of revelation by which Fianna Fail is to be undermined. But after a decade in which tribunals have acquired Riverdance levels of longevity, one can only conclude that, regardless of what they have managed to throw up, their impact on the political process has been virtually nil.
What does all this mean? It means, I think, that the entire means of critical apprehension, by which we have come to observe and explain politics to ourselves, must be regarded as deeply suspect. What actually happens, how people vote, what events come to mean, bears virtually no resemblance to the analysis, predictions or pronouncements of those on whom the Irish electorate allegedly relies for information. The descriptive process takes one direction, and life goes off in the opposite one.
This means, among many other things, that it is time for journalism to look very closely at the way in which it describes politics. The pseudo-moralising of the past generation has not had any significant impact on the public consciousness, and a different template is required if we are to have any hope of understanding ourselves politically at all.
jwaters@irish-times.ie