The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Following on from yesterdays partial recantation of my previous opinion that the Election was dull, let me complete the process by briefly drawing your (plural, I trust) attention to today’s interesting developments. The most major of which was the way the focus shifted from Ahern and the complex (or was it Byzantine as Pat Rabbitte put it?) dealings which are rendered more than usually opaque by the manner in which information about them appears to be transmitted from the media, Ahern himself and discussed by political correspondants.
The focus has shifted to a much more easily assimilated narrative for both public and election wonks. One which runs more or less as follows: “Let’s see how much mileage can be got out of the “they said” “no, they said” sparring between Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats over who has been leaking information from the Tribunal into the public space”.
I’m not the only one to think this, even RTÉ ever ready to make things that little bit more digestible for a fickle public only one finger away from changing channel, concur.

And what does the present ‘debate’ between the two parties do in political terms? Why, take the attention away from a) Fianna Fáil (old, rather too familiar story just that bit too complicated to really be interesting) and b) Fine Gael and their policy launch. Hardly the most astute move in the book by FG to engage in finger pointing on this day of all days. Was it my imagination or did the faces at the FG top table seem just a little more strained than they had in previous days? Mind you, that is as nothing compared to the feeding frenzy that the PDs generated yesterday. And in fairness to FG there is a certain sense in pointing up the disunity between the Coalition partners, particularly if the source of the reason for that disunity can be made murkier still.

And who appeared reasonably pleased, all things considered? Why Trevor Sargent, Gerry Adams and perhaps to a slightly lesser degree Pat Rabbitte! As well they might. This boisterous display does no one any favours and if reflected in the polls will surely soften the tone a bit. Perhaps see some focus on policies.  Perhaps see the ground shift away from the treacherous shoals of personality (and we all know how that played out last time) and onto something of substance…
Won’t it?