Day of reckoning has arrived, but who will win?

Today, in their wisdom, their fear, and their anger, the people decide what happens next, writes Michael Clifford

Last Tuesday, as the election campaign turned into the final, frantic straight, Enda Kenny visited another successful company. This time it was Joe Duffy Motors in Dublin, a car dealership that hugs the M50 at the Finglas exit.

Mr Kenny arrived eight minutes late. His car pulled up just across from the entrance to the impressive building. He leapt out and was greeted by various company executives before being ushered inside at a speed usually reserved for getting in out of a storm.

He was there to promote the Government’s role in creating the conditions to increase apprenticeships. After a tour of the operation, he arrived down in a workshop to give his election spiel and field a few questions from the media.

Comedian Oliver Callan has suggested that Mr Kenny’s handlers would prefer if they could actually ensure that he is driven all the way to the podium where he speaks in these workplaces, such is their fear of having him exposed to that species known as voters.

The visit was typical of the campaign he conducted over three short weeks. He most certainly didn’t set the campaign alight, but it must equally be acknowledged that none of his rivals did either. This was a damp squib of a campaign, which may be a reflection on the leaders and their handlers, or may just be a harbinger for a new type of electioneering.

None of the leaders engaged in the kind of hands-across-the-masses walkabouts that used to be a staple of election campaigns. Quite often, those engagements lent a sense of magic to the election. Back in 2007, the last election before the great fall, Bertie Ahern spent the Friday preceding polling day in Cork. Around mid-morning he arrived in Wilton Shopping Centre. What unfolded was reminiscent of a visit from a Hollywood star or maybe even an affable Pontiff.

Ahern was mobbed as he moved through the crowds, both hands reaching out at once to allow the assembled touch him. His handlers and a few gardaí on duty had a job keeping the peace, or at least dampening down the hysteria.

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Ahern was in his element. As he was swept along , his face lit up frequently as if somebody in the crowd was as familiar to him, as his was to the person in question. It was rock ‘n’ roll in election terms, the sprinkling of a kind of magic that was released with a popular political leader communed with his people.

This was all for a man whom a few short weeks previous to that had been at the centre of a row over his personal finances and, by extension, his integrity.

Looking back, it’s fair to say that those were more innocent, less cynical times.

All that has passed since has left the population at large with attitudes towards serving Taoisigh that veers from jaded to contemptuous.

The new dispensation informed Mr Kenny’s approach to the election. Even if he were anyway popular, exposing him to the public would be to invite attack from the elements that now believe politics is more about expressing base anger in a manner just short of violence as a means to effect change. As a result, some of the glamour has been drained from campaigns, and it wasn’t just Kenny who trod carefully through the electorate over the last three weeks.

It's all to play for as Election 2016 campaigns enter their final days https://t.co/qJKrzBNKHd (DOD) #GE16 pic.twitter.com/7lsAXaI5Wh

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) February 22, 2016

Joan Burton was equally careful, ensuring her constituency stops were overloaded with set-pieces in schools or small businesses.

Micheál Martin was slightly more adventurous — trading on the public’s short memory — but he did come a cropper when he encountered some noisy protestors in the Crumlin area of south Dublin on Monday.

Gerry Adams’ walkabouts have been confined to areas where his popularity is high. He doesn’t have to worry about the outliers for the water protestors or those decrying the austerity policies of the last seven years. His problem has more to do with the past and his role in the Republican movement when its modus operandi was to bomb its way to peace.

The Taoiseach has been forced to apologise for his 'whingers' remark https://t.co/gZKgB9tWmm pic.twitter.com/xsBivplrXL

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) February 22, 2016

During the presidential campaign, his colleague Martin McGuinness was confronted by David Kelly, whose father Patrick was murdered by the IRA in 1983. Sinn Féin is too professional to allow space for any kind of a similar embarrassment befalling the party leader during a campaign.

That is the near background to the muted nature of the campaign. The tone was set by Fine Gael and its strategists. They would claim the modus operandi represents a new form of campaigning, borrowed, like much else, from the Tories’ election last year.

It now seems apparent that the overall strategy was to conduct a short campaign, in which the leader kept the head down while all and sundry parroted “keep the recovery going” all the way to the finish line.

Perhaps that was a grave miscalculation. In particular, nobody must have road tested a slogan which has elicited the instinctive reply of “what recovery?” from large swathes of the public. Perhaps the strategists will just blame the focus groups for not coming clean.

The other element borrowed from the Tories was to scare the electorate into accepting a return of the government. Again, this was flawed.

The Tánaiste has responded to the Taoiseach's 'whingers' comment https://t.co/K2Trd0BMen pic.twitter.com/t7fFQSXimT

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) February 22, 2016

David Cameron had a bogeyman to present to his electorate. He used the spectre of a Labour party, led by Ed Miliband and held to ransom by the Scottish National Party, as the unpalatable alternative.

Mr Kenny had no such bogeyman. From the outset, the consensus was that he would emerge as the only possible Taoiseach after polling day. There was no specific alternative to hold up to the electorate as personifying a dark force.

Unless there has been a major shift in public opinion in the last few days, then it appears that the main thrust of the Fine Gael strategy simply did not work.

In fairness to the Fine Gael strategists, it was always going to be difficult to push for re-election in the current environment of the kind of widespread disenchantment with mainstream politics that exists across the democratic world.

Now the race is run. The day of reckoning has arrived. Regrets will have to be put down to experience. The people, in their wisdom, their fears, their anger, will decide.

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