In politics we need leadership of integrity and commitment, commanding public confidence and support. With good reason, no one has challenged John Bruton's integrity or commitment, but just over half his party concluded he did not command the public confidence and support needed to challenge effectively the existing administration.
Such a conflict between political imperatives cannot be resolved without pain, but at least we have seen the first stage of that resolution accompanied by a measure of restraint and dignity. In an earlier and less populist age, the qualities that mark John Bruton would almost certainly have ensured his continued political success. In a country where politics has been debased by a minority of its practitioners, he is a man of exceptional personal integrity.
In a country where politics is all too often reduced to doing "turns" for constituents, he is a serious and thoughtful politician, fertile with ideals, and an excellent off-the-cuff speaker when he puts forward his convictions and thoughts on the future.
He is above all a man deeply concerned for the good of the country, a patriot in the best sense of that word. In a country where single-party majority government is no longer a feasible option, he has also demonstrated a remarkable capacity to lead a multi-party government.
Like all political leaders, he has his defects, none of them serious, but few leaders have shared this particular combination of political talents. However, all this has been outweighed by the fact that in our populist age, political success seems to require something else over and beyond these qualities. It is hard to define that "something else"; in some cases it is called "charisma"; in others it takes the totally different, one might almost say opposite, shape of a "Teflon" quality which ensures that nothing negative sticks.
John Bruton was seen as not having either of these "something elses". Politics is a cruel and an ungrateful trade, in which the ultimate key to success is - success. If someone is not seen as "delivering", then he or she is likely to be replaced.
Politics is too serious a matter for sentiment to be allowed free reign. While John Bruton was clearly convinced he retained the capacity to succeed in mobilising public support at the next election - otherwise his patriotism would have led him to stand down of his own accord - he would be the last to contest the validity of the principle that the public good must take precedence over personal considerations. This change in the Fine Gael leadership is the outcome of a conflict between two different and legitimate political calculations. One, that the best hope of defeating Fianna Fail at the next election resided in not rocking the boat, but going into the election under John Bruton's leadership. The other, that a change of leadership is needed to galvanise the party into more vigorous action. Either view can be reasonably held, which is why the vote in the party was so close. Whatever the outcome of the next election, we shall never know with any certainty which was right.
Whoever becomes leader of Fine Gael will have an opportunity and a duty in the months ahead to demonstrate that this upheaval was worthwhile. Whatever the circumstances in which it occurs, a change of leadership can have a galvanising effect on the members of a party. The instinct to rally to a new leader almost always outweighs any bitterness over the circumstances that brought about the change. This will especially be the case when the leader has the capacity for loyalty and party solidarity that John Bruton has demonstrated.
The biggest challenge facing the new leader of Fine Gael will be to motivate the parliamentary party and its front bench, the performance of which has been less than impressive in recent times.
To the extent that some of those involved may claim, with dubious merit, that this inadequate performance reflected the doubts of some among them about the leadership of the party, any such excuse for past inertia has now been exorcised.
It will be for the new leader to present to the party in the Oireachtas and the country a vision of its potential role that will inspire his or her deputies and the party members to enthusiasm and activism - and will win back for it the support that it has lost in recent times. That loss of support since the 1997 election has been substantial.
Even after adjusting for the tendency to overstate Fianna Fail support, the Irish Times/MRBI polls throughout the last 12 months have shown that Fianna Fail has been registering support one to two percentage points higher than in the 1997 election. Meanwhile, the 28 per cent share of the vote secured by Fine Gael three years ago has been reduced by eight to 10 percentage points - about one-third.
Where have these votes gone? Back to Labour - three points up on the Labour/ Democratic Left 13 per cent vote of 1997 - but also to the Green Party and Sinn Fein, support for both of which has doubled since that election. There has been an erosion of one-third of Fine Gael's vote to parties of the left or to Independents.
For some reason, this swing of public opinion to the left has, remarkably, attracted virtually no comment in the media, which often fail to see the forest of public opinion because of over-concentration on the trees of the latest poll.
What lies behind it?
In the 1997 election campaign Fine Gael, and John Bruton in particular, led a campaign in favour of more equitable taxation, designed to benefit the less well off and people on middle incomes rather than the well off, and also strongly advocated a radical improvement of public services.
This evoked a positive response from the electorate, gaining Fine Gael an increase of one-seventh in its share of the vote. Thus it mopped up a proportion of the emotional swing in that election against Labour, which seems to have reflected popular antipathy to that party's earlier 1992 decision to coalesce with Fianna Fail.
Unfortunately the rest of that swing from Labour went to Independent candidates, and while this added three further Independent deputies to the Dail, most of those votes were inevitably wasted, having the effect simply of giving a bonus of extra seats to both the two larger parties.
While one effect of these largely wasted Independent votes was to boost Fine Gael's Dail membership, it also gave even more seats to Fianna Fail - nine more, in fact. Thus, Fianna Fail and the PDs, despite the fact that neither had managed to achieve any increase in their popular vote, were paradoxically enabled to form a coalition government, with the support of four locally focused Independents.
What has been most striking about the period since the last election has been the swing to the left in public opinion - to which the character of Charlie McCreevy's Budgets has greatly contributed.
There has also been the striking failure of Fine Gael to sustain the dynamic momentum of the campaign for greater equity and better public services upon which it successfully fought the last election. This has clearly contributed substantially to the consequent drift of one-third of its support to left-wing parties. A new leader of Fine Gael will scarcely fail to draw conclusions from this pattern of events.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie