The reporting, public discussion and, for all we know, public apprehension of last Saturday's Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll provide a classic example of the soap-operafication of politics, the relatively recent tendency to receive each new development in the most histrionic fashion imaginable, writes John Waters.
The poll was interesting, but no more than that. Conducted even before the release of the Flood report, it conveyed considerable public unhappiness with the Government, largely arising out of the continuing controversy about cuts in the public finances.
In a sense, this is not a "story" at all, since one would expect the public to be extremely disenchanted with the continuing bad economic news. But the spin on the story by some commentators was such as to suggest that not only was the Government in some kind of trouble in terms of its stability and capacity to continue in office, but that there were also serious implications for the outcome of the second referendum on the Treaty of Nice.
There are no such implications. The Government, regardless of Flood, Nice or opinion polls, is more secure than any administration since the last government led by Jack Lynch and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that.
This media tendency to promote every sigh of electoral dissatisfaction as a crisis for the incumbent government is a legacy of previous coalition arrangements between Fianna Fáil and both the PDs and the Labour Party, when the junior partner remained susceptible to media pressure and public perception.
No such circumstance pertains at the moment, since the PDs have nothing to gain and everything to lose from kicking the blankets off their present bedding arrangement.
The idea that the current levels of dissatisfaction with the Government will have any effect on the Nice vote is even more ridiculous. It is suggested that, because the margin of support for the treaty shown in this latest poll is even narrower than was suggested by the final poll before the last referendum, there is now a strong possibility that public anger with the Government will result in another No vote.
As one of the few commentators in the country who predicted a No vote in the last referendum, I am happy to say on the record that I do not believe there is the slightest prospect that the Irish electorate will reject Nice a second time.
The situation this time is entirely different. Last time the electorate rejected Nice by accident, without conscious forethought and without any serious discussion of even the remotest possibility of a No vote resulting.
Last time the individual voter had the luxury of being able to register a personal protest at whatever it was that was bothering him or her, secure in the knowledge that Nice would be carried anyway.
IN THIS referendum, the possibility of Nice being rejected, and this time for a second time, with all the consequences, real, imagined or threatened, creates an entirely different context in which each individual voter must come to a decision. This time the individual voter must do so in the knowledge that his or her individual choice may amount to more than a personal protest. This time we must really mean what we say.
I do not subscribe to the notion, much in favour among academics, of an electorate functioning with a single complex intelligence - the idea of electorates delivering sharp rebuffs and so forth. Electorates comprise a host of individuals, making their choices largely independently and alone, and usually on the basis of self-interest.
Everyone knows it is far too late to opt out of the EU. Having spent many years trying to persuade the Irish electorate to consciously reject what is wrongly termed the European project, I will eat a copy of The Irish Times on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin at noon on the day after the result if Nice is rejected for a second time.
The issues of the referendum are the issues of the referendum. The economy is the economy. The Flood report is the Flood report. The popularity of the Government is the popularity of the Government. The outcome of the next general election will be decided on the basis of the events of 2006 and 2007, not the events of 2002, which will be long forgotten when polling day comes round.
In the discussion of this latest poll, then, we can observe what has happened to the reporting of politics.
Once upon a time, events were reported, developments summarised and facts outlined in a fairly clinical manner. Arising from this, the reader, listener or viewer made up his or her mind as to the likely consequences, if any. Now, every shift is interpreted as though it were a sudden and dramatic turn of events and every day is a political doomsday in which there are no mere interesting developments, but always and only crises.
This, of course, is symptomatic of the moving of politics from the realm of the serious to the realm of soap opera, in which the main object of reporting is not to inform but to excite. Behind this is an entirely new ethic in the communication of public information: the desire to exploit each shift and turn in public affairs so as to create the maximum degree of anticipation in the public as to the likely next turn in the plot.
This is neither politics nor journalism, but badly written soap opera.