The Teflon Taoiseach will hope his luck sticks

Bertie Ahern is a man for the seasons: his life and the changing seasons are inextricably linked. It's partly because he is a farmer's son, partly because he's a traditions man. A Martian, dropped in Drumcondra, could work out from watching Bertie what time of the year it was.

If it's August, he's not in Drumcondra at all; he's in Kerry. If it's October, he has the navy overcoat on. If it's November, he's off the jar. If it's the beginning of Lent, he has a lump of ash the size of a 50p in the middle of his forehead.

Because he's a man for the seasons, he probably spends the last few days of any year looking back over what has been achieved and making New Year resolutions. If that's the case, I'm sorry for him as we reach the end of 1997.

Because the only sensible New Year resolution is an impractical one. He can't decide to continue to be the Teflon Taoiseach. He can hope to continue but it's not fully within his control. Especially in a year such as that facing him, complete with two tribunals (one under challenge by a former Taoiseach), two by-elections, issues like child abuse, abortion and refugees moving from a simmer to a higher level of heat and an inescapable deadline coming quickly on Northern Ireland.

On the other hand, 1997 has been no picnic either. I pointed out in this column in June that the appointment of people to ministerial posts they had shadowed while in opposition was questionable. They tend to carry with them a staleness and every intemperate word uttered by them in opposition comes home when you're in government, not just to roost but to do everything else a dirty bird tends to do.

Two Ministers have suffered from the roosting-bird syndrome in the past year, with the result that neither Brian Cowen nor John O'Donoghue has the public reputation which their considerable individual ability would otherwise entitle them to.

However, these roosting birds have not done Bertie Ahern any damage at all. Nor have the Uturns taken by the Government, most notably and most regrettably the funking by Fianna Fail and the PDs of the pre-election commitment to introduce mandatory reporting of child abuse.

The U-turns have been noted by commentators but not by the public - or at least not in any way directly and negatively linked to Bertie Ahern.

I believe Bertie Ahern's style of management is more suited to the times than is currently realised. Note, I use the phrase "style of management" rather than "leadership".

There is a myth abroad which holds that a political leader must have leadership skills. At this fin de siecle time, it's much more important that he or she have the skills of management. There is no need for a Taoiseach with a huge personal "vision" for Ireland and even less for a Taoiseach with a driven determination to leave behind him a series of changes bearing his fingerprints.

Most people want to get on with their lives in the comfortable knowledge that someone is theoretically in charge of the national issues who is neither evil nor out of sympathy with the times. Presence, not performance, is the issue. Role, not radicalism, is the requirement.

Now, there are many inside Fianna Fail and outside it, not excluding me, who yearn for objectives reached, decisions made, stances taken (preferably requiring clear courage), and statements made which memorably indicate the significance and direction of a government's thinking.

That yearning will go unfulfilled as long as Bertie Ahern is in power. His failure to fulfil it is one of the reasons behind his growing reputation as a man to whom bad things don't stick.

It's a fallacy that being decisive and taking stances makes for great (or long) leadership. Nobody could have been more decisive than Albert Reynolds who could take three or four stances before breakfast, any day.

Bertie Ahern is no stance-taker. I see him as like the leader of those teams they send in to deal with sieges. Where a homicidal armed man has barricaded himself into a room with several terrified children, a decisive, action-taking individual is not the one you send to solve the problem. You send someone who will keep talking, keep listening, keep buying time, because if you buy enough time, circumstances can soften.

One of the key factors in the Taoiseach's management style which contributes to the Teflon factor is his capacity to delegate. It puts him at one remove from disaster yet allows him to take credit for success.

It also allows him to give free rein to some of his more able and ambitious frontbenchers knowing that, for example, running election campaigns - even successfully - can put the man or woman into stressful situations they may weather but not without scarring.

If Bertie Ahern's New Year resolution is "continue to be Teflon Taoiseach" then in brackets beside the main resolution he will need to put "continue to mind Mary Harney". So far, he has minded her into a pussycat. The last half of 1997 has had Mary Harney announcing project after project, grant after grant. Not only that but the Taoiseach has not uttered a syllable to suggest that this might be a temporary little arrangement.

Bertie Ahern knows very well that Albert Reynolds's famous definition will become truth, probably before the end of the decade, but he will never let on for a moment that part of his role as Taoiseach is to sustain the dying myth of the PDs. That, however, is the fact. The raison d'etre of the PDs faded some time ago.

Although the drama, timing and righteous rhetoric of their setting-up concealed it, the fact is that the PDs were a one-issue party. A pothole party. And the pothole was called Charlie Haughey.

Once he was filled in, there was the scramble typical of little parties whose time has passed: investigations of individual electoral failure, spurts of policy-making and public statements about new directions.

But good intentions do not an identity make and the PDs no longer have an identity or a reason for existing. Their frantic attempts to indicate that they have a separate identity lead to disastrous assertiveness outings like Bobby Molloy's appearance on the lunchtime news the day after the Budget when Father Sean Healy lost his temper with Molloy's demands for praise for social housing policy and made the Junior Minister sound like a patronage-and-giveaways politician of 30 years ago.

The Taoiseach has done pretty well so far in keeping down the triumphalism within Fianna Fail regarding the fading of the PDs.

There are a lot of individuals, some of them prominently placed within Fianna Fail, who strain at the leash, longing to ridicule what was once a major threat. But the Taoiseach will prevent such action. Indeed, he is gradually, and by example rather than instruction, teaching Fianna Fail that the satisfaction of getting something off your chest isn't always worth the price you have to pay for the satisfaction.