Bertie no longer meets expectations and will go sooner than we think

You can create them yourself as a candidate. You can confound the expectations of others and gain huge political momentum. But if you win, you have to live up to the expectations you have created, or that have been created around you

POLITICS is ultimately all about expectations — creating them, confounding them, living up to them. Expectations make and unmake politicians to a far greater extent than any other external factor in politics. Expectations now represent the greatest dilemma that Bertie Ahern has faced in his political career.

If you don’t believe me about the power of expectations, tell me this. Who was Paul Tsongas? Let me remind you. He was the guy who won the New Hampshire Democratic primary in 1992. He was expected to win it, and duly did. And then began to sink without trace. Because in that election, someone else confounded expectations. Tsongas merely met them.

Paul Tsongas had been a US senator from Massachusetts for a number of years. He was a fine, handsome man with a good national reputation. He had fought, and won, a battle with cancer, and as the early frontrunner in the 1992 US presidential election on the Democratic side, he believed he had to win the New Hampshire primary in order to establish himself.

In the weeks before the primary, things looked better and better for Tsongas because his main rival kept shooting himself in the foot.

The rival, a little-known governor from Arkansas, first came to prominence when a woman claimed to have had an affair with him, and when accusations began to surface that he had managed to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war.

Paul Tsongas’s rival was of course Bill Clinton. With his campaign in deep trouble before it had even got off the ground, Clinton was rescued by his wife Hillary, who appeared with him on the famous 60 Minutes current affairs TV show. It attracted a huge audience and seemed to steady the Clinton campaign.

But no one had ever won the presidency if they lost the New Hampshire primary, and so for Tsongas, victory on the night — he beat Clinton by a comfortable eight points — should have been the start of a serious bid for the presidency. Instead, it was the end.

And the reason was simple. Bill Clinton confounded the expectations of every pundit and media expert in the land by coming second. A virtually unknown candidate, surrounded by scandal, forced to defend himself day after day, he had somehow managed to persuade enough people to believe in him that at the very last minute he had staged a comeback of sorts.

In the immediate aftermath of the primary, Clinton behaved as if he had won, referring to himself as the Comeback Kid and thanking the people of New Hampshire for their overwhelming support. The day before he was seen as a loser, and a minor figure. The day after, he was seen as a winner. Clinton went on to win the presidency, and the name of Paul Tsongas is remembered today only by political anoraks like me. He performed to expectation in that primary, but Clinton beat the expectations.

Fast-forward to this year’s New Hampshire primary for another example of the politics of expectation. Hillary, who may well have saved her husband’s career by standing by him during the 1992 contest, was suddenly in deep trouble herself. For months her campaign seemed to have a certain inevitability about it, but as it got closer to actual contests the campaign, and Hillary herself, started to stutter. She didn’t perform well in debates; she seemed cold, distant, out of touch. And her rival, Barak Obama, was suddenly on fire.

The life seemed to go out of Hillary’s campaign altogether when Obama won the Iowa caucus, and she went into the New Hampshire primary, all of a sudden, as the candidate whose campaign was on the slide. Now she, too, was being written off as a loser.

But like her husband before her, she confounded all the expectations. Universally predicted to lose by pollsters and pundits alike, she won. And if that becomes the turning point, as it was in 1992, and Hillary goes on to win the nomination and the presidency, the fact that she won is what will be remembered. The margin of her victory in New Hampshire — she got about 7,500 more votes than Obama did — was incredibly tight. But no one will remember that.

It’s not just in the US that politics revolves around expectations. It’s true everywhere. But expectations are the great double-edged sword of politics. You can create them yourself as a candidate. You can confound the expectations of others and gain huge political momentum. But if you win, you have to live up to the expectations you have created, or that have been created around you.

Look at the history of our own politics. Jack Lynch won an election with a huge majority because he had successfully created expectations of a new economic dawn, and as soon as it was seen to be a mirage, he was dumped.

Garret FitzGerald was swept into office because he was seen as a visionary and an economic genius. He was soon to be (unfairly) characterised as a messer who couldn’t tell black shoes from brown.

Des O’Malley was seen as the best leader Fianna Fáil never had. He was the man who was going to “get the government off our backs”. But his reputation too began to dim as soon as he took office, and began to make the compromises that are inevitable in office.

Dick Spring was given the “Spring tide” because he was seen as the incorruptible. But when he helped Albert Reynolds back into government he was painted as arrogant and interested only in the perks.

THEY were all elected because they created massive expectations. They all ultimately became the victims of the expectations vested in them. Of course, history is often kinder than the judgment of today, and in a number of the cases I’ve mentioned the reputations of individuals have been given added lustre by time. But history is small consolation to a practising politician.

There’s no doubt that history will remark some of Bertie Ahern’s lasting achievements. But he is now firmly in the expectations trap.

He has been lucky in a way because he never set out to create more than modest expectations of himself. He has always wanted to be seen as a simple man and a man of simple tastes.

He has painted himself as a good manager, a good deal maker, and a man in touch with the people. And he won three elections partly because he was always seen as living up to those expectations.

But as he faces yet more questioning in the Mahon Tribunal he must know that already his reputation as a simple and modest man has been seriously undermined in the eyes of many who voted for him. And as the economy begins to slow, and anxiety builds, he must know that his reputation as a good manager is under serious threat.

He’s at a crossroads now because he has always prided himself on living up to the expectations of at least his own people, if not the rest of the population. And he knows that is fading fast.

That’s why, despite how painful it will be for him, he will go, voluntarily, sooner than we think.