RTÉ date for leaders’ debate gave Cowen time to save FF campaign

FIVE MORE years? Maybe, maybe not. We’ve grown accustomed to long Dáil terms, and we seem to have forgotten that two to three years was always more usual.

One of the Taoiseach’s great skills is building a consensus, and no doubt if anybody can hold a government together for the long term, it is he. But it’s easier to build and maintain a consensus when the economy is going well, when there are no really tough decisions to be made, when tribunals are a distant cloud.

The next Dáil term will be a lot rougher, and whoever is supporting the Government will face a bumpy ride from day one. The opposition is going to be a lot closer to the Government in terms of numbers and there will be a wide range of issues to unite them, at least on a day-to-day basis.

We are looking at a couple of years when there will be immense pressure for much tighter fiscal policies. That means two things. First, a lot of the tax and spending promises made in this campaign are going to be very hard to keep.

Second, the need to maintain fair balances in a time of retrenchment will confront the new Government with challenges they are not used to. Approximately 100,000 children lived in consistent poverty or suffered from educational disadvantage at the start of the campaign. They’re still there, waiting.

The choices that need to be made must not be made at the expense of those who live at the margins.

But whatever the future holds, there can be no denying what a triumph the election was, especially for the Taoiseach. Those of us who got it wrong can only gaze in wonder at the capacity of Fianna Fáil, with its deep roots in every community in Ireland, to absorb punishment and to come out fighting. If every other political party had those capacities, what exciting politics we would have.

There were key moments in this campaign, of course, and key decisions. The single most important decision, and one that has not really been remarked upon, belonged to RTÉ. When it decided to hold the leaders’ debates a full week away from polling day, instead of as the last event of the campaign, it effectively (without knowing it) determined the outcome.

And the key person in this campaign? No doubt whatever, it was Brian Cowen. He was the game-breaker, and his were the Brian O’Driscoll moments. Without a player of his formidable talents and depth of knowledge, Fianna Fáil would have been floundering in the face of the onslaught of the first two weeks and may not have recovered.

The relationship between Cowen and the debates was crucial. I readily admit that I thought Enda Kenny had done well in the debate with the Taoiseach. Bertie Ahern was visibly nervous at the start, perhaps waiting for the inevitable questions about private matters, and didn’t really settle down until they had passed. Towards the finish, Enda made a couple of slips on matters of fact. They probably wouldn’t have been any big deal if there hadn’t been time to exploit them.

But there was time, and Brian Cowen made the most of it. I thought in his debate a day or two later with Richard Bruton he was over the top (I was clearly wrong again), but again and again in the last week he hammered home the point about the economy. And he was ably supported by another of the real stars of the Fianna Fáil effort, Brian Lenihan.

Between them, they succeeded in turning the obvious and evident desire for change, a desire that had been palpable in the opening weeks and early polls, into anxiety about the future. We want change, but are we prepared to take a risk? That in the end was the question that swung it back.

The point about timing was further borne out by the one occasion on which Brian Cowen himself stumbled, in his partial debate with Pat Rabbitte on RTÉ’s Questions and Answers. Rabbitte demonstrated no fear in taking on Cowen and forced him into an error on the cost of co-location of private hospitals.

But by then it was too late. Had Rabbitte debated with Cowen earlier and more directly, and Enda with Bertie a week later in the campaign, the mood for change could well have been sustained to the end.

That’s life, of course, and that’s politics. Each of the party leaders left standing must now contemplate the future. For the Taoiseach, of course, the immediate future will be bound up with putting a government together.

And he will be more aware than most that probably the single most important job he has to give out will be that of chief whip. Nobody will want it, but it is going to require somebody of endless patience and subtlety. When the Government is up and running, his mind will turn to the longer-term future. Will he remember the image of Jack Lynch in 1977, the night he won an unimaginable 20-seat majority, expressing the view that his troubles were only beginning? Will he remember the view of Enoch Powell that all political careers are doomed to end in failure?

ENDA Kenny transformed himself in the election and put in a fantastic performance.

He led his party with incredible vigour, and I don’t think there can be any doubt that he won every single vote that was there to be won. He was, without a doubt, the best party leader he could be, and there is still room for him to grow.

I believe myself he has at least one more good election in him and it may be sooner than he thinks. He needs now to take a bit of time to do some of the stuff he hasn’t had time to do because of organisational pressures.

He needs to find some additional advisers on the policy front and spend a lot of time immersing himself in the philosophy, as well as the detail, of economic and social policy development.

Pat Rabbitte, too, led his party from the front. His critics in the party (and they will be few in number) might well reflect that Rabbitte’s original calculations were correct. His own strong instinct that the people deserved a choice was the right one. He also calculated that a pitched battle between the Government and alternative government was the only way to prevent a further proliferation of smaller parties and independents, and in that he was also proved right.

Ironically, that calculation may have worked a bit too well because Labour got a bit squeezed along with everybody else. The key thing is, though, that Rabbitte honoured the deal he made with people and that gives him huge freedom of manoeuvre in the future.

But the next Dáil is a place of great potential for the main opposition parties, especially since no other party won enough seats to give them any additional status. I know the song they should be singing as the Dáil prepares to resume:

Pick yourselves up, dust yourselves off, start all over again…