Compared with spectacular performances at various tribunals and the dramatic meltdown of the Haughey myth, this election is boring, writes Terry Prone
According to theatrical legend, a production was once staged in the Gaiety which required a cast of thousands. The budget, on the other hand, did not stretch to thousands. In fact, the budget stretched to roughly a dozen.
This meant that huge numbers had to be represented by 12 extras, donning and doffing turbans and cloaks as they entered and exited.
The audience accepted this, up to a point. However, when a Dub in the back row of the audience noted the umpteenth return of a particularly plump extra, he could not stay silent.
"Last time round, Fatso!" he yelled encouragingly.
There's a fierce ring of last time round, Fatso, about this election. Political communication, having advanced through a number of phases, has now - palpably - hit stasis.
In the early days of television, simply appearing and surviving was as much as most politicians hoped to achieve.
The arrival into politics of accomplished TV presenters, such as David Thornley and Justin Keating, and the training programmes developed by Bunny Carr, raised the bar. That period also witnessed the development of a uniquely Irish phenomenon: the Satirised Gobshite Syndrome.
Frank Hall was the first to make us cringe and laugh at the idiocies uttered by real politicians.
In common with his successors, he proved that in some constituencies, being caricatured as a gobshite is a great career move, causing one of two reactions. The first is: "That's just the Dublin 4 media making him out that way." The second is more frank: "He may be a gobshite, but he's our gobshite."
The fact that political communication has disimproved substantially in the last five years has been rendered less obvious, because of the dramatic distractions caused by the meltdown of the Haughey myth and the spectacular performances of individuals at the various tribunals. The trend, nonetheless, has been downward, and, during the current campaign, that trend is reaching its nadir.
Arguably the definitive encounter happened this week, on RTÉ at lunchtime. The broadcast was from a regional studio. The presenter asked a question. The politician ignored the question completely, launching into a badly scripted diatribe that seemed to last for 37 years.
When the normally buoyant Sean O'Rourke eventually dragged the speaker to a halt, he did so with the preoccupied misery of a man actively considering emigration if he could get a cheap enough flight. There was a certain masochistic fascination to hearing his expectations fulfilled. We got the old pantomime exchanges: "Oh yes, you did." "Oh no, we didn't."
We got five-year strategies and 10-year strategies, and accusations of innumeracy, venality and past tolerance of Charvet shirts. Last time round, Fatso, I thought, as I killed the radio.
It's tiring enough to send 12 tired extras through four or five media doors. The problem is that, these days, we're sending the extras through dozens of doors. Like the weather, the media are everywhere, with maw bizarrely propped open for any incoming politician, despite the fact that, every time it gets a chance, the public says politics and politicians are boring.
When a general election arrives, media convinces itself that even if plain vanilla politics is boring, campaign politics is exciting and sexy. It isn't.
This election has thrown into sharp relief the danse macabre of media and politics. Because media have space to fill, political parties gear up to fill it.
Media then blame the parties for not filling it in an interesting enough way. This week's version of last time round, Fatso, was the murmured protest of hacks bidden to yet another press conference about sleaze. The sleaze theme rivets Fine Gael and, to a lesser extent, the Labour Party. Even if opinion polls show the public obdurately refusing to connect sleaze in any vote-changing way to Bertie Ahern, both parties keep leading the horse to water in the resolute conviction that sooner or later the dumb nag will drink up, lads.
In terms of political communication, this does have one thing going for it - the fact that voters like consistency in their politicians.
Historically, this was of significant assistance to Ronald Reagan, who said much the same thing for half his life and decorated the rest of the space with charm, anecdotes from his film years and great phrases from Peggy Noonan.
Just as every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, so every political party responds to the shortening of the lit general election fuse in its own way.
The Progressive Democrat way is a stylish dysfunctional cleverality, best exemplifed by Michael McDowell shinning up a ladder to drive home the postered point that an overall majority would be an horrific option. It made for great pictures, not least because of our collective admiration that an Attorney General could shin up a ladder so confidently, it provided headlines and it completely missed any connection with the real voting patterns of the diminishing number of real human beings who vote.
Real human beings do tend to think of themselves, and therefore experience covert and warm feelings when they get a neatly timed boost to their welfare payments.
Where Fianna Fáil is concerned, in this untypical second last week, the danger is the party's almost obsessive seeking out of swords to fall on, banana skins on which to slide and feet to insert in mouths. Fianna Fáil members are not used to being liked.
They are unnerved by approval. They are like the salesman whose customer unexpectedly agrees to buy before the salesman is ready to close the sale.
They are adrenalin addicts endangered by the ambient calm.
If someone were to do a James Carville for them for the final week, the poster to stick up in every constituency would read: "It's the boredom, stupid. Don't fight it."
• Terry Prone is a novelist, media analyst and director of Carr Communications in Dublin