Bertie played to his strengths. The vulnerability. The doe eyes, the arched eyebrows, the innocence of it all. A great performance. A credible performance. Well almost, writes Vincent Browne.
He was on his uppers between 1987 and 1993 but during that time he saved £50,000. Some uppers! As part of the marriage settlement he paid £20,000 to an education fund for his two daughters and he paid off some other bills. £30,000 on "other" bills? What "other" bills? And because of that he was cleaned out and had to raise a bank loan of around £40,000 which he was able to clear off when his 12 "close" friends did a whip-around.
With a lump in his throat, this is what he said: "In the separation I agreed to provide £20,000 for my children to an education account as part of the agreement and I did that . . . And, I also had to pay off other bills, so the money I had saved was gone."
And there was more. He knew the tax law, he said. He "would pay the interest on it . . . I am an accountant . . . I would pay that back in full on another date when I could. I have not repaid the money because they refused to take it. I offered a number of times to pay it."
There was more.
"The difference of talking about somebody taking millions and somebody taking hundreds of thousands in exchange for contracts and other matters," said our former minister for finance and current Taoiseach, "and taking what is relatively small contributions from friends who had a clear understanding they were paid back - I do not equate those. My advice is that I broke absolutely no codes, ethical, tax, legal or otherwise."
Bertie, at the best of times, is bad at communicating precise information - great at communicating impressions but not too good on the detail, so maybe there is a further innocent explanation for all this. (Also, as this is being written in the immediate aftermath of the interview, I may have missed out some of the material or misunderstood it.)
Bertie was in charge of the national finances when this whip-around occurred. He was one of the best-paid people in the country at the time. So why the necessity to give him a "dig-out", to use John O'Donoghue's inelegant phrase? But then when Charlie Haughey was sitting on millions in Kinsealy, there would be round-robins to give him a "dig-out" as well. Apparently people in high office are in need of a "dig-out", even when they are not in need of a "dig-out".
And why, if it was clear that the £38,000 loan from his friends was to be repaid with interest, how was this a "dig-out" at all, since he had a loan from AIB on O'Connell Street on precisely the same terms? That is if it was indeed a loan and if indeed interest needed to be paid.
And if it was an up-front loan, repayable with interest, why did Bertie not simply pay it back in instalments? The friends didn't want to take it, so how then was it a loan with interest?
It was a "debt of honour" (unfortunate phrase that, for it was the phrase Charlie Haughey used in characterising a debt he owed to AIB and never repaid). Why did Bertie describe it as a "debt of honour", if it was the same kind of debt as one would get from a financial institution and if it wasn't the same kind of debt, then, there were special favours.
Maybe everything is not kosher about the money from the 12 close friends and maybe he should have paid tax on it or declared it among his interests, but there is no major scandal here, at least none that is apparent in the immediate aftermath of the RTÉ Six-One interview.
Bertie's strongest asset is he both is and appears to be a nice fella. It's hard not to like him in person and it's hard not to like him on television. Most politicians are nice and predictably so. Predictably so because if they are not nice they are less likely to be elected - one can think of a few startling exceptions to this but, in general, it is true. But Bertie is especially nice and has benefited hugely from this actuality and perception. He benefited again last night.
And that niceness, mixed with that vulnerable demeanour, will extricate him from this embarrassment and will go further. Nobody now cares about the revelations of the tribunals. And it is not just the attention span of the public that is too short; so too is the media's.
There is not much public or media interest in the real corruption underpinning Irish society: the level of inequality that has arisen.
The Central Statistics Office reported 10 months ago that in 2004 one-fifth of the population (19.4 per cent) was living on household incomes of €9,680 or less (that is, €186 per week or less). The report stated if social welfare payments were excluded then 40 per cent of the population would be in this poverty bracket. The realisation that two in five people in this massively wealthy society are dependent on social welfare payments to keep them out of the "at-risk poverty" bracket is shocking and evidence of a deeply dysfunctional society. But who cares?