Political dinosaurs in a state of paralysis

WHILE we are fully justified in criticising the Government for its handling of the financial crisis and being less than reassured by the “dazzled rabbit” demeanour of our finance minister, the fact remains there are no obvious messiahs in waiting in the political orfinancial communities.

The opposition parties have done little more than criticise and it’s hard to feel confident they would do any better were the Government to fall — few of them have had any ministerial experience and their relatively lofty poll rating owes more to dissatisfaction with the Government than to any hope they would do better if put in charge.

It is probably better to let Messrs Cowen and Lenihan blunder on. There is a very slight chance they might succeed. In the more likely scenario that they will make things worse, Fianna Fáil will take such a pasting at the next general election that the depressingly endless replay of civil war voting patterns might be broken finally by a critical mass of political dinosaurs breaking through into the 21st century.