In most walks of life there is a certain logic to a career path. Of course, many individuals change their careers, but the great majority of people continue broadly along the path they have mapped out for themselves early in life, and as they develop their talents some will emerge as leaders in their chosen occupation.
After a period at the top of the tree most of these will then retire, often when they reach a specified physical age. There is a certain logic and coherence to the whole life-cycle.
By contrast, democratic politics is a roller-coaster. First of all, only a minority embark on a political career early in life: most move into politics later, after cutting their teeth in some other kind of activity. And many of those who get involved in politics later on in life then fail to stay the course, some being displaced in mid-career by a fickle public, with only an uncertain chance of later climbing back again on to the roller-coaster.
Politics is not a career for the faint-hearted.
A basic problem for politicians is that the private interests of individual citizens will often, perhaps even usually, be in conflict with the general good of the electorate as a whole. The reality of this conflict of interests faces every politician with an almost permanent moral dilemma. If he or she seeks single-mindedly to promote the general good, which all too often may be at the expense of one or other private interest, he or she is unlikely to be re-elected. If, on the other hand, a politician's actions are uniquely determined by his concern to be re-elected by his voters, there can be no point in his or her being re-elected; for such a politician serves no useful public purpose.
This means that every politician faces a permanent series of moral dilemmas between serving the public interest or acting in a manner that will preserve the support of many of their voters, who are concerned with their own private interests.
Arriving at a judicious mixture of decisions designed to conciliate these two opposing demands is effectively what politics is about. A politician must have sufficient regard for popularity to survive, if he or she is to be able to serve the public good for long enough to justify having embarked on a political career. Politics is a tightrope as well as a greasy pole.
What is not widely understood by the public is the positive role in this process that is played by political parties - the activities of which are often seen quite negatively by the members of the public who are not familiar with the political process.
Many of the 95 per cent of the electorate not involved in party politics fail to appreciate that a combination of strong partisan loyalty of party members, and the somewhat weaker emotional commitment of many of the electorate to one or other political party, are vital factors in enabling politicians, for much of the time, to ignore the selfish concerns of many individual voters, and instead to pursue the public interest.
For, without the knowledge that however many private interests they may offend during the lifetime of a parliament, their loyal party members and supporters will, nevertheless, come out to work and vote for them at election time, it would be very difficult for many politicians to continue to serve the general public interest.
In this important respect party politicians have a clear advantage over many independent members of a parliament, and especially over independents elected on local issues, for whom the pursuit of those local interests must necessarily take precedence over the general good of the country as a whole.
It is not only at election times that the party system protects elected politicians who seek to promote the public good, often at the expense of individual interests. For throughout the course of the life of a parliament, individual politicians frequently come under pressure from interest groups, or individuals, seeking some private advantage.
If pressures are exerted at local level, independent members may find it difficult to resist them, but where a government, or an opposition party, decides to ignore such partisan demands in the general public interest, its deputies have the protection of the party whip.
This enables them to tell the advocates of such a private interest, that - however much he or she might, of course, like to support the cause being pressed with them - they are not free to do so, because if they did, they would lose the party whip.
The pressures from private interests on politicians remain a major distorting factor in national affairs, especially in a small country like Ireland, where politicians are much closer to the electorate than in larger states. We have seen how this closeness has sometimes led to actual corruption at local level, and even to a few national politicians becoming financially dependent upon business interests. Less insidious, but also worrying, is the pressure to which all politicians are subjected from a wide range of private interests seeking by threats of withholding their vote to preserve, or to secure for themselves, material advantages of one kind or another.
These pressures have contributed significantly to the fact that our society is now more unequal than almost any other in Europe.
What is particularly striking - and to some people puzzling - is the extent to which many Irish politicians seem to be more concerned to please individual voters than to serve the wider interests of the whole electorate upon whose votes they depend.
Individual clientelism remains a hugely important and negative factor in Irish political life.
This almost primitive aspect of Irish politics has, however, operated in parallel with a process by which the other contrasting side of Irish politics is a remarkable record of successive governments of different complexions in devising, over many decades, national economic politics which have enabled our State to join the half-dozen economically most prosperous and most respected European states.
There are, indeed, two very different aspects to Irish politics.