FG's leader must score high on nice fella factor

Shortly after her success in a by-election in 1994, I was placed beside Kathleen Lynch from Cork at an Oireachas press gallery dinner. I was uncomfortable (as I think she was) for I expected the evening to be difficult as I had written disparagingly about her comrades while she was in the Workers Party. I need not have worried for she was not just gracious but great fun.

Over the course of the dinner, she unfolded a political truth which, until then, I had not perceived and which, I now think, is one of the most important factors in electoral politics. She said, in her pronounced Cork accent, that before she was elected to the Dail she had assumed most TDs were a crowd of wasters (that was not the word, but it is close) but after only a few weeks in the Dail, she had begun to think differently. "I don't know whether I have been bought off or what," she said "but, for God's sake, I now think that even Austin Deasy is a nice fella."

She continued: "I've been thinking about it and, actually, it's quite obvious, they would not have been elected if they weren't nice fellas in the first place." (she automatically assumed, I suppose, that all the sisters were nice too).

And she is quite right. Very many politicians are nice fellas, even the male ones. There is a higher proportion of nice fellas in Dail Eireann than in any comparable gathering and the reason, as Kathleen Lynch instructed me, is obvious.

It is largely because he is a nice fella that, I suspect, George W. Bush was elected to the White House. It helped of course that Al Gore is a bit dysfunctional - and the hanging chads came in handy, too. Bill Clinton is a nice fella, and you do not have to take my word for it. Ronald Reagan was a very nice fella, which accounted hugely for his massive popularity. Tony Blair is sort of a nice fella. John Major was. Nelson Mandela is so hugely admired, not just because of his courage and endurance, but because he is a lovely fella.

Of course some very un-nice fellas get elected from time to time: Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, Harold Wilson (maybe), Edward Heath (maybe). But, by and large, those elected are nice fellas.

In our own politics, the most successful have also been nice fellas. Jack Lynch was so massively popular because he was a lovely man. Garret FitzGerald was also very much liked. And yes, Charlie Haughey was/is a nice fella (OK, let's modify that a bit: sometimes he can be a nice fella, but when he's bad . . .)

All of which brings us to the Fine Gael leadership election. One of the problems for Fine Gael over the past several years has been Bertie Ahern. It is not that Bertie is so clever, or visionary, or eloquent, or impressive on the world stage. It is that he is a nice guy.

John Bruton is not a bad fellow and those who know him are aware that he is funny, generous and daffy in an engaging way, but he does not come across as a nice guy like Bertie does and that was a problem.

Now Michael Noonan is a clever man. He is also a cute man and takes pride in being a cute man. He could see around corners on a level playing pitch. He is personally funny and gregarious. But he doesn't come across as the nice fella Bertie does. The pride in the cuteness is a special problem.

And now, out of the blue, comes a very nice fella, offering himself as a leader of Fine Gael, Enda Kenny. His name would not have been the first or second or even 23rd that would have occurred to me as a future leader of Fine Gael had I been to dinner 40 times with Kathleen Lynch. But now that Enda Kenny himself has thought of the idea, maybe it is not so bad. Enda is a nice fella, maybe even a bit nicer than Bertie. He may not know much about BSE or decommissioning or the Duggan case or Ned O'Keeffe's farming practices or Willie O'Dea's taxi arrangements or who the Prime Minister of India is or what is the capital of Djibouti. But people who meet him like him almost immediately.

Whether the leader was nice wouldn't matter so much if Fine Gael stood for something but it doesn't, apart from not being Fianna Fail.

The integrity stuff doesn't work and the claim that John Bruton did not nail Fianna Fail on the sleaze cross is nonsense. Is there anybody in the State, other than recently arrived Moldovans, who doesn't know that Charlie Haughey, Ray Burke and Liam Lawlor were all members of Fianna Fail and that there have been a few problems concerning them? Actually, John Bruton did a magnificent job in diverting attention from Fine Gael's own walk on the sleaze side in 1995 when it got back to government and suddenly became awash with money.

If instead of just huffing and puffing about sleaze, Fine Gael was, for instance, to demand the banning of all private finance from the political arena and a standing commission with tribunal powers to investigate the finances of politicians and parties, then it might be getting somewhere on the sleaze issue. But it won't do that because of a combination of timidity and avarice.

So given its commitment not to stand for anything at all, Fine Gael had better think about electing as leader someone the people might instinctively like. As my 10-year-old daughter said when her school principal announced her retirement: "Go for it."