Cowen ends as he began: Late and defensive
The knife-edge opinion polls had sliced through European capitals and urgently put the continent’s media on major story alert.
The star BBC reporter was perfect in his delivery, but they still taped it three times as they wanted Brian Cowen walking past as the words “failure”, “chaos” and “tailspin” were boomed out next to him.
The Taoiseach carried on with his whistle-stop, shopping centre campaigning regardless, but it was a similar scene in Dunnes shoe department, but this time it was a Danish TV crew speculating about the outcome.
One Italian newspaper reporter was not having a good trip to Ireland, her swanky Dublin hotel had failed to provide “electrical energy” in her room and she had just had a spat with one of the Taoiseach’s handlers to boot. She was hoping for a yes vote so she could go home Saturday, but is expecting she will have to stay around longer.
Mr Cowen ended the Government’s pro-Lisbon campaign the way it had begun — late and defensive.
The yellow T-shirts of the young Fianna Fáil volunteers were splattered in rain as they huddled together under the dank midlands skies waiting for Mr Cowen to appear.
It felt like everyone was wishing it was already over, but had to go through the motions one last time.
As the Taoiseach invaded their lives for a few seconds, shoppers were generally polite, but in a “I really don’t care about Lisbon, what’s on special offer” kind of way.
Two men observing the Taoiseach’s glad-handing efforts had only one comment to make: “He’s short enough, isn’t he?” — “Yeah, he’s short enough, alright.”
The woman on the check-out counter managed a weak smile for the Taoiseach after he was directed towards her by a Fianna Fáil aid, but as soon as his back was turned she spat at his handler: “I could have done without that.”
Mr Cowen didn’t hear the comment, he was already bounding through the door of the Everything for €2 shop and assailing everyone in sight.
His zeal was no doubt fuelled by the knowledge that if voters deliver a no victory today, his credibility at his first EU heads of government meeting next week will be worth precisely €2.
Money was also clearly on his mind when he considered how the no side had been able to run the Government down to the wire on Lisbon like this — and threaten to inflict a crushing, early blow to his authority as Taoiseach.
Mr Cowen said ominously that people were “drawing their own conclusions” about where the other side was getting its cash from, leaving us to draw our own conclusions as to what he meant.
As he briefly slipped into women’s clothes in Penny’s — the section, not the outfits — two more shoppers were handed leaflets they didn’t want and harassed by foreign journalists they didn’t need.
The store detectives gathered around Mr Cowen as he bounded from aisle to aisle, giving him the look of nifty shoplifter, but he was failing to steal much interest from passers-by.
Luckily, Mary O’Rourke and Donnie Cassidy were on hand to give comic relief as they barged their way into any possible local photo-op. Who needed BBC News 24 when you could make page 24 of the Mullingar freesheet?
Albert Reynolds was also ready to muse on the tightening opinion polls: “The Irish are strange — they talk about it [voting no], but don’t do it,” the man once dubbed the “Longford Slasher” said.
Mr Cowen had better hope his mentor is correct, otherwise the Taoiseach’s name is about to be seared deeply into the European political consciousness — for all the wrong reasons.
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