Bashing the leader of the day doesn't really work. Just ask FG

THE Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis is being held in Killarney over the weekend. The way the Government has been behaving in recent weeks there should be lots of excitement.

Fishermen and farmers are threatening to hold lively protests outside, but the country as a whole should be outraged at the recent disclosures of mismanagement, which are compounded by the appalling arrogance of ministers suggesting that we have never had it so good.

The health service is not so much in crisis as in chaos. Never has so much been spent to provide so little. Even those sick people who are lucky enough to get into hospital run the risk of dying of neglect, or being infected with something more serious in the hospital. Is that part of a secret Government remedy to abolish the waiting lists?

Yet in spite of all this, Bertie Ahern is still the most popular leader in the Dáil. In politics the success of parties is generally gauged in terms of power. As a result Fianna Fáil is seen as the great Irish political success story. Next year, when the party celebrates its 80th anniversary, it will have been in power for 56 years - a phenomenal 70% of the time.

To what do they owe this success, and can others learn from it? Although Fine Gael has been in power five different times since then, for a total of 16 years, it would not seem to have learned very much. It has always sought power on a promise of law and order, or by trying to exploit a perceived electoral fear of the Fianna Fáil leader specifically, or the party in general.

Cumann na nGaedheal blamed Eamon de Valera for the civil war and apparently thought it could remain in power by exploiting public hostility towards him. As soon as the conflict was over the government sought to bolster its grip on power by calling a general election while de Valera and other leading members of his party were still in hiding.

At a rally in Tralee, with WT Cosgrave on the platform, Desmond FitzGerald (Garret's father) was speaking when somebody shouted: "What about de Valera?" FitzGerald replied: "De Valera is on the run, because he acted as an enemy of this country. As long as we are in power, de Valera and every other enemy of the country will have to be on the run."

The Long Fellow responded next day by declaring that he and his colleagues had no intention of remaining in hiding indefinitely. "Living or dead, we mean to establish the right of Irish republicans to live and work openly for the complete liberation of our country," he declared. "Our opponents make a mistake if they imagine that we are going to remain on the run."

De Valera made it to the public platform in Ennis on August 15, 1923, but was promptly arrested. "We have arrested the man who called up anarchy and crime, and who did more damage than anyone could have conceived," justice minister Kevin O'Higgins told a rally in Rathmines next day. "The real issue in the election is - anarchy versus law and order, and the government candidates stand for law and order and decency."

It was a strange kind of law and order that the government was standing for when no one was ever brought to justice for the barbaric excesses of Free State troops in Kerry.

If the government really believed de Valera was behind the IRA destruction, why was he not charged? The government actually ordered that he should be prosecuted "with the least possible delay", but the attorney general was only able to put together a pathetic case.

The only "real evidence" they had to substantiate any charge of misconduct was an inflammatory letter de Valera wrote to the secretary of Cumann na mBan on January 5, 1923, at the height of the civil war.

In view of the enormity of the accusations made by members of the government, it would have been utterly ludicrous if they charged him only with inciting Cumann na mBan - of all organisations! Yet the government held him without trial for 11 months, most of it in solitary confinement.

Within five years of founding Fianna Fáil he came to power and remained in office for the next 16 years. Some people have suggested that if he stepped down after World War II he could have gone in a blaze of glory, but he held on and has been blamed for the stagnation and terrible emigration of the 1950s.

IF de Valera had gone in the 1940s, his most likely replacement would not have been Seán Lemass but Seán MacEntee, who would probably have been a disaster, as he proved as minister for finance in the 1950s.

Fine Gael always targeted de Valera personally in its opposition to Fianna Fáil, and it later targeted Lemass in much the same way, suggesting he was some a gambler unfit to lead the country.

Of course, Jack Lynch, the Nice Fellow, was a different sort. They tried to depict him as too nice to lead Fianna Fáil, but there was never any danger they were ever going to depict Charlie Haughey as such. Throughout the 1980s Fine Gael sought power by attacking Haughey in much the same way that it attacked de Valera. Indeed, one senses that the opposition now believe they can undermine Fianna Fáil by highlighting the sleaze of the Haughey era.

Remember, back in 1977, he was given the poison chalice of health and social welfare. His enemies in government were going to bury him. But he showed his political prowess by being seen to do a good job. Within little more than two years he was elected Taoiseach, despite the hostility of virtually the whole government.

Since then we have seen many a promising career seriously damaged, if not destroyed, in the health portfolio - just ask Mary Harney, Micheál Martin, Brian Cowen, or even Michael Noonan. Haughey, who is now depicted as the personification of political profligacy, is the last person to emerge from health with his political reputation intact, much less enhanced.

Charlie went on to pocket at least €8.5 million in dubious gifts and contributions for which he is now pilloried.

The worst part of that legacy has been the way in which it has been used to get the electorate to take their eyes off what has been happening as hundreds of millions have been squandered. Could you imagine what this árd fheis would be like if Charlie were still in power?

Many people can still remember when the real excitement was within the hall, such as in 1970 when Neil Blaney made a botched play for power and ended with the rest of the gathering chanting, "We back Jack," or the following year when Paddy Hillery told the disrupters they could have Kevin Boland but they couldn't have Fianna Fáil. Surely it's time for people to realise that history tells us personality politics don't work!