Drapier: Politics is like a game of cards, with the Government cast as dealer. The opposition plays with the cards it gets. Mostly it loses. Sometimes the Government deals itself a bum deal. Sometimes the cards go bad.
Sometimes the dealer cheats and gets caught.
Mostly the sequence of cards is predictable, if not boring. Very occasionally there's a decent row.
This week Michael McDowell played a joker, a joker with a black face marked with the word "RACE". It's one hell of a gamble which could prove to be perfectly benign. But it could also go very, very wrong.
This is not the first time that the race card has been played. Noel O'Flynn and Ivor Callely both played it in recent years. Both of them topped the poll at the subsequent election. But it is the first time that any political party has looked to get votes by treading on such dangerous territory.
Drapier has a lot of time for Michael McDowell. He is certainly not racist. That said, all of us, Michael included, know that there are lots of nasties out there who cannot abide a black face or oriental eyes.
Maybe it's the clever thing to do to throw these guys some Smarties, but personally it makes Drapier sick.
There may yet be a political consensus in favour of the amendment, but after this week's events in the Dáil it seems unlikely.
There was a quiver of real anger in Pat Rabbitte's voice when he tore into Mary Harney on Wednesday. At least some of the opposition guys seem to be annoyed at being bounced, and Drapier knows that many colleagues on the Government benches are a little queasy.
Until now all the political leaders have collaborated in keeping race off the political agenda. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it may well have been a mistake.
We have had none of the debate about multiculturalism and/or integration, which is raging throughout Europe.
Instead of looking to agree a way forward we have looked to pretend that we don't have a problem.
It's not too late to agree a way forward on issues like immigration and asylum. But Michael McDowell's referendum won't help.
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By contrast, this week also saw an unexpected outbreak of consensus on another issue, the price of building land.
This is one of those issues which has been around for decades. A year ago, Bertie passed it over to the All-Party Committee on the Constitution, and Drapier, for one, assumed that we would hear no more of it. Instead the committee has produced an impressive report with some radical proposals.
The committee's chairman has been something of a revelation.
Denis O'Donovan is an affable Cork man and good company, but during the week he also demonstrated a cutting edge and a command of the brief which surprised more than a few of his colleagues.
Drapier heard him on radio during the week. He was debating with one of those free-market gurus who cannot grasp the fact that the housing market is rigged by developers and landowners in order to control supply and make windfall profits. Denis dealt with him patiently and well, and won the argument hands down.
Of course, this isn't the first time that we have had proposals like these. Judge Kenny came up with something similar in the 1970s, and Labour has been pushing it ever since. So, too, have the Greens in recent years. But this is the first time all parties have signed up. It remains to be seen if Martin Cullen will run with the ball. He will upset a lot of the party's backers if he does.
And of course Tom Parlon will be very, very unhappy.
Drapier just can't work out John Deasy. Having got battered by the press last week, you'd think he would go back to one of those nice pubs on the quays in Dungarvan and keep his head low.
But no. Apparently discretion doesn't run in the genes: so John decided to open his heart on the airwaves to the intense irritation of most Blueshirts.
Fine Gael is facing into a dodgy election with the virtual certainty that seats will be lost. The last thing it needs is for one of its own to give succour to those who would hasten the party into the political graveyard.
John is concerned that Fine Gael doesn't stand for very much any more. On radio on Wednesday he listed off various ways in which the party could sharpen things up - crime, deregulation, tax, that sort of thing.
He didn't say that we should be nice to George W., but we know he's that way inclined.
Trouble is that the PDs have already covered the base on most of those issues, as John himself readily acknowledged.
Faced with this unfortunate fact, John came up with a tour de force straight from the Michael Howard menu list (or was it the guy with the baseball cap?). Fine Gael should be nice to gays.
There's a bright idea. FG should major on a notion which is guaranteed to run straight up the noses of most of its core supporters. You could effortlessly imagine the IFA lads choking on their spuds as John exposed his blueprint for a great blue future.
Truth is that the electorate ditched the Fine Gael pinkos at the last election. That ground is already lost to Labour and beyond, and Enda Kenny is not the man to win it back.
Fine Gael is more conservative (in the nicest possible way) than it's been in decades, and it needs to find a way of turning this into a virtue rather than a liability.
One man who has managed to do just that is Gay Mitchell. You have to admire the oomph of a guy who gets selected to run for Europe and within a couple of days contrives to be expelled from the Dáil on a matter of high principle.
Like him or not, he's got style.