For many people watching the last election results stagger in last week, there was one moment that sent a chill down the spine. Happy as they were that the Coalition had been given a good kicking, the balloon of elation was punctured when Avril Doyle was declared the winner of the last European Parliament seat in the East constituency, writes Fintan O'Toole.
Facing the cameras she announced that her stunning achievement was a landmark on the road to making Enda Kenny Taoiseach. She thus raised, at a rather inopportune moment, the great unspoken problem. Just when it appeared that a real possibility of an alternative government was beginning to emerge, she reminded everyone of the biggest obstacle to that possibility becoming a reality. The prospect of making Enda Kenny Taoiseach is, as Fianna Fáil well knows, Bertie Ahern's greatest remaining asset.
Only a fool, of course, would dismiss Enda Kenny after Fine Gael's brilliant performance in the local and European elections. Just two years ago, many people - including myself - claimed that the party was moribund and that it could no longer be presented as the core of an alternative government. Enda Kenny's promise to "electrify" the party conjured up images of Fine Gael as a lifeless monster and the new leader hauling its dead weight towards the skylight hoping for lightning to strike. Yet he did pull it up there and there has been a bolt for the blue shirts. He has successfully re-organised and re-enthused his party, and that, after the disaster of 2002, is no mean feat.
The one thing that was not an issue in the latest elections, however, was the identity of the next Taoiseach. It's an open question, of course, whether voters beyond Fine Gael's hard core thought of Enda Kenny at all. But I'd be amazed if the cod-JFK poses of the leader in the party's billboard campaign attracted more people than they turned off. The images used in the posters, according to a party spokesman, were carefully chosen to emphasise Mr Kenny's "listening skills". Or, to put it another way, the leader has so little to say that the best image his handlers could think of was one in which he's all ears.
This vacuity isn't just a matter of image. To take one example, Enda Kenny and his advisers have rightly identified the issue of trust and its betrayal as central. They know at some level that the potential big swing against the Government in the next general election will be pushed along by a deep feeling of disgust at the corruption of Irish society. The leader's big set-piece speeches have therefore gone big on buzz-words like truth, integrity, trust. He has promised to "govern by the Truth" , to stand up for the people who "pay their taxes though they know that bribery and corruption have been endemic at the top of this State". Which is all very nice, if more than a little short on substance.
And then, in April, when the election campaign was getting under way, he was asked whether he ever saw a future role in Fine Gael for Michael Lowry. The answer to this question is what the Americans call a no-brainer: "There are absolutely no circumstances in which this party will admit to its ranks a man who evaded tax on a massive scale and who held undisclosed offshore accounts even when he was serving in government."
Except that's not the answer Enda Kenny gave. What he did say was that consideration would be given to every application for party membership, and that "I do not know what Michael Lowry's mind is in terms of his own future in politics". The clear implication was that the question was really one for Michael Lowry to decide, and that, if he deigned to apply for membership, the party leader was open to the idea. A man who, according to the McCracken report, set out to "cynically evade both the taxation and exchange control laws of the State with impunity" has not thereby ruled himself out of a party that intends to "govern by the Truth".
This means, quite simply, that on the major themes of trust and integrity that he has chosen as the defining issues of his leadership, Enda Kenny remains radically unconvincing.
The party faithful may be feeling great about their leader, but privately at least Labour and Green activists dread the prospect of standing on the doorsteps begging voters to make Enda Kenny Taoiseach. And this is an issue, not just for those parties, but for Fine Gael too. To get back into power, it needs, not just a capable party leader, which it has, but a credible national leader, which it doesn't. An alternative government needs to appeal beyond party boundaries to the deep and broad desire for real change. Enda Kenny's problem is that the word that comes to mind when you see him is not "change". There are ways of dealing with this.
The leader of an alternative government doesn't have to come from Fine Gael or to be the leader of that party. A serious and coherent strategy for a coalition based on Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens has to include questions both of policy and of leadership. Otherwise, place your bets now on Fianna Fáil's third successive term.