Charlie McCreevy had better watch out. Some of our professional observers are beginning to call him "the best Minister for Finance for decades". Drapier even heard Moore McDowell express such views on a recent radio programme and when Moore McDowell starts praising politicians, we had better all watch out.
You may well say that it is easy to be a good finance minister at the present time. It is hard even to count the money as it rolls in. Hairshirts are a memory and the words "spending cut" have been wiped off most departmental computers.
Think back to ministers who lost or damaged their reputations through spending cuts - Ernest Blythe, Sean McEntee and Richie Ryan, or think of the great exception to that rule, Ray MacSharry, who turned an ordinary career to riches through his wielding of the knife.
Charlie McCreevy now has at his disposal riches undreamed of by his predecessors. Just imagine if CJH as minister for finance had the assets now at Charlie's disposal - though on second thoughts better not.
But the irony is that Charlie McCreevy is being voted Best Finance Minister Ever precisely because he is not in the spendthrift mode so many today want him to be. Charlie is the one shouting "Stop", telling us not to lose the run of ourselves, that nothing lasts forever, free lunches are not all that free and so on.
Drapier subscribes to the view that Charlie McCreevy is indeed a good finance minister precisely because he is his own man and has served a long apprenticeship to get to where he is today.
People in here who talk about Charlie McCreevy being a prisoner of the Department of Finance miss the point. Finance does strange things to its ministers and the shades of its founding fathers, Joseph Brennan and J.J. McElligott, hover over the shoulders of all ministers while its senior denizens convey even the best economic and financial figures with an air of gloom and foreboding. You need to be a strong and free spirit to avoid succumbing to the prevailing ethos of that grim building.
Charlie McCreevy is indeed such a free spirit. He was a free spirit when he almost single handedly stood up to the all-powerful Charles Haughey in the early 1980s and castigated the improvident policies of those years. Charlie McCreevy is a believer and he believed that the policies of those years were seriously damaging to the nation's health. He was right and he paid a high price. It is easy to forget now the abuse and the nastiness he endured as he found himself frozen out.
When the PDs were founded many thought Charlie would be a natural member, especially given his closeness to its leading lights. He chose to stay in Fianna Fail, some say because his Fianna Fail roots run deep, others because he has a sense of humour, but, one way or other, Charlie stayed put. He has, however, stayed close to the PDs and his friendship with Mary Harney has sorted out more than one little difficulty in recent times, especially when Bertie Ahern's memory was less than it might have been.
The important point, however, is that what Charlie is doing in Finance is entirely at one with his deeply held convictions. In addition, he is mature enough to know there is a very real difference between what the public think and what interest groups and pressure groups tell us they think. Charlie knows that most people are sensible, that most of us have known the hard days, that most of us are concerned about the future and that most of us have our own fears and insecurities about the fragility of the Celtic Tiger.
So in a sense, in spite of what the louder voices are saying, Charlie is touching a popular chord by being prudent. He is behaving with the public finances the way most sensible people behave with the family finances.
Will it work in the sense of being politically popular? Drapier thinks Yes, but has some doubts and qualifications. The high levels of ostentatious earning and spending as evidenced in some of the tribunal evidence, or as seen in legal fees, is eating into any sense of national solidarity. There was plenty of evidence, too, for all parties, from the recent election canvass, of a new affluent sector for whom the word "community" has no meaning and who believe their present affluence is entirely of their own making and who intend to continue as they have been going, and devil take the hindmost.
That sort of mentality is the big danger to Charlie McCreevy and indeed to any modern-day government. People see ostentatious and often insensitive spending all round. They see success measured exclusively in such terms and they see newspapers, through their social diarists, trying to create a glamour industry. Expectations quite simply are being raised to levels that are unsustainable and which may well do serious damage to the fabric of society.
That is the danger. But lest readers think Drapier is presenting Charlie McCreevy as some latter-day Ernest Blythe, purveyor of a new puritanism, enjoining us all to a life of frugality and self-denial, Drapier says relax. Charlie McCreevy would never claim to be a saint nor would that claim be made for him. Charlie is a life-affirmer and has the scars to prove it. He is a gambler and some of his gambles look like paying off - cutting Capital Gains Tax is one example, new private sector pensions is another while the decision to bin the Telecom money into long-term pensions is so right that not a single dissenting voice has been raised.
Charlie's great qualities as a politician are his common sense and his courage. He is closer to what ordinary people are thinking than all the spin doctors and focus groups put together. And he is a conviction politician with a track record of following those convictions.
Drapier said earlier that when a politician finds himself being praised by economists he should examine his conscience and ask himself what he is doing wrong. Likewise when he finds himself being talked of as a future leader he should look over his shoulder, not once but a few times.
Charlie's McCreevy's star has been rising over the past year. TDs and senators from all parties see him as someone who is serious about sorting out their long-term pay and pension problems in a professional way. He is seen as bluntly honest, always saying what he means. He has a good memory with little that needs forgetting. He is not touched by the Haughey shadow and his own electoral record over the past 22 years shows him as someone who can get the votes in bad times as well as good.
Drapier hastens to add that of course there is no vacancy. Nor is there likely to be. And, if there was, Charlie McCreevy is the last man you would hear talking about it. But there is a sense in here, a growing sense that should there be . . . but Drapier will go no further for today.