TIMES SQUARE: Vincent Browne was repeating in these pages the other day his belief that "niceness" is a very considerable political asset, and he instanced some of those who (according to him) have or had it: Bertie Ahern, Jack Lynch, Garret FitzGerald and Enda Kenny. Michael Noonan, he insisted, hasn't, adding: "Neither have I, but that is neither here nor there."
For a journalist, disowning niceness is a kind of minor boast. Misanthropy is part of our make-up, we are polite only when it is useful to be so, we scorn good manners, and for many of us, the creation of enemies is the most satisfactory part of our jobs.
So to accuse a news journalist/columnist of being nice is a pretty serious insult, worse than a suggestion of bias, and almost as bad as a charge of being sentimental.
Being nice is not how newshounds get on; and as one who enjoys his Baskerville status, our Vincent is well aware of this.
The whole thing of "niceness" brings us back to the boggy territory of National Identity. For many years, indeed centuries, we have prided ourselves on being a "nice" people. That is to say, when we were beaten down, impoverished, scorned, jailed, robbed, persecuted, starved and forced into emigration, our response was always along the lines: "Musha thank ye kindly sire, and we'll be on our way, God bless ye all for the daceny ye have shown us."
Off we would then go, and our betters would shake their heads disbelievingly after us, and perhaps the woman of the house, a tear in her eye, would express the feelings of all in a remark like: "Aren't they a delightful class of people all the same?"
Recognising a rhetorical phrase when they heard one, the household would then troop back inside wordlessly, dissolving in laughter only when they reached the sanctum of the library, or perhaps the dining-room if the bell had gone for dinner.
Years passed. We became Americanised, and learned how to wish people a nice day, if not how to have or enjoy one. We were uncomfortable with the notion of "nice" being applied to the day, especially as we already had some 8,564 words for whatever weather conditions (usually awful) were prevailing. But we were still nice people, as confirmed by our numerous American visitors.
We dragged them in off the roads for strong tea and scones, and news of our cousins. We took them where the signposts couldn't. We showed them the insides of public houses, and placed bodhráns in their hands and introduced them to traditional music.
Then before we knew it, we had joined the EEC. All of a sudden, we were brothers and sisters to people we knew were world-famous for not being nice at all (and not ashamed of it either): the Germans and the French. In effect we were being asked to subtly re-define our notions of niceness, and since subtlety and re-definition were never our strong suits, we failed dismally, and fell back on the only notion of niceness we knew: giving cups of strong tea, and elaborate road directions, to complete strangers (some of whom hated tea, and weren't actually travelling anywhere).
It is a notion that has served us well. Now, former Tánaiste and Labour Party leader Dick Spring, warning of the dangers of a second No vote to nice - beg pardon, Nice - insists that far from losing national identity, Ireland has actually gained power by joining Europe.
He wants us to cuddle up even closer. He says we have to decide whether we want Ireland to continue to be "a positive, confident, generous, outward-looking country, or to sink backwards into a narrow, selfish pessimism". In other words, he is asking if we want to be nice people or nasty people.
But history (as summarised above) has shown that we just can't help being nice people. Naturally we do not wish to be thought of as narrow or selfish - the French and the Germans have worked hard enough at making these national characteristics their own - but there is no reason why we should not continue to embrace pessimism, an Irish virtue almost as time-honoured as our niceness.
It doesn't have to be the narrow, selfish pessimism rightly feared by Dick Spring. It can be the honest-to-God old-fashioned Irish pessimism, rich in the certainty that when the good times roll, not everyone will benefit, and confident that many of the so-called benefits of affluence are entirely superficial.
We are, after all a nation, whose glasses were just about empty for a very long time, so it is no shame to admit that no one can ever bring us - pessimists to a man - to see them as half full.