THERE are two great myths that get a new lease of life every time a general election is in the offing. Both are daft.
The first is that if you put out enough Good News stories, you end up with a great public reputation. (The reality is that a bad, news story, bravely handled, is a godsend, even though it may not look it.)
The second one is that if you've been in government, you should, in the run up to an election, constantly remind the floating voters of how much they owe you. When polls told the Labour Party that its popularity had considerably eroded, the word clearly went forth from the party strategists go, tell the voters as often as you can how we have delivered on what we said we would do in the Programme for Government.
Party discipline ensured that, as day follows night, in recent months speeches by Ministers and Ministers of State have included sizeable reminders of deliverables delivered. Every radio and TV interview has had its ritual reminder inserted, too.
I must be missing some strategic subtlety in all of this. Because I can't see these reminders creating a great groundswell of warm approval for Labour. "Look at all I've done for you" are not usually the words we use to initiate or reinforce a great relationship.
The ritual reminder approach is Establishment behaviour, and the floating voter is never attracted by Establishment behaviour. Any words, deeds or posters which reverse a party or an individual candidate into the mass of "typical" politicians are counter productive.
The only politicians the floating voter likes are the untypical ones, the mavericks. This is one of the great appeals of the Greens. They neither look nor sound as we expect "real" politicians to sound, so they're innocent until proven guilty.
The single issue candidate has the same unorthodox appeal. We, all want to take David home with us. Goliath? Never.
LEADING the largest party in the State presents that punishing paradox to Bertie Ahern this week end the knowledge that to many people a political party with longevity and size is, ipso facto, less appealing than a smaller party which may come without a track record of achievements, but has the advantage that it also carries no moral baggage worth mentioning.
That, all by itself, would make this ardfheis a challenge.
When to that challenge is added the fact that a general election is coming up, it grows more formidable. When an impending public inquiry into Ben Dunne's outsize generosity goes into the mix, serious volatility ensues.
The coming together of all these circumstances this weekend has put the Fianna Fail leader under arguably the greatest pressure of his life the need, in his major televised speech tonight, to define a leadership style, articulate a vision, face down critics and opponents alike, and rally the troops for battle.
In a very real sense, this is a make or break ardfheis. This weekend, Fianna Fail can - through its leader - shake off and disown everything that feeds a negative stereotype. The alternative is unimaginable.
Normally, political leaders don't have anything like that pressure at their annual gatherings. If, they've been in government, the leader's speech is usually a litany of what the administration has done right.
If they've been in opposition, the leader's speech is a statement about how much the party has gained from this worthwhile, period of reflection. Either way, leaders can trundle through packages of policies from every portfolio.
None of these options, in my view, is open to Bertie Ahern. Viewers tonight don't want to know about Fianna Fail's moral gains from enforced reflection on the opposition benches, any more than they want to be dragged through policy after policy.
It is a huge problem for any party to be in opposition when the good times are rolling, and it is all too easy for such a party to push itself - in the name of vigorous opposition - into repetitious, opportunistic and hostile yapping.
None of that can happen in the leader's speech tonight. Those gathered in the RDS want a leader who is best known for his skill at achieving consensus to go against the grain of public expectation and to come out fighting. Instead of conciliation, they want Bertie to demonstrate a capacity for passionate condemnation - and they know where they want that condemnation directed.
THERE is deep anger within Fianna Fail about Dick Spring's comments last weekend - and even deeper anger that those comments have not been widely seen as antidemocratic. In essence, what Dick Spring has said to the nation is this:
"It doesn't matter that the majority of you will vote for Fianna Fail. I will do my best - and use my party - to ensure that your choice on your ballot paper is rendered meaningless. I will parlay the votes of less than 20% of the Irish people into a weapon to stymie the votes of almost half the Irish people."
People at the ardfheis see that as pre emptive spoiler tactics, and, they want the sour arrogance they" see in it nailed. They see the time for restrained response as long past. They want the Us (Labour Party Virtue) and Them (Fianna Fail Untrustworthy) arithmetic disassembled once and for all.
But, more than anything else, they want Bertie to be more than their friend. That's a given his friendship. He is everybody's best friend. There will be few people in the RDS this weekend who have not experienced, one to one, his, kindness, his respectful listening, his openness.
And because of that, there will be few people in the RDS who don't hope against hope that tonight he will go up on that platform and rivet them with a speech resonant with personal conviction and passionate determination. They want to see him amplified beyond a nice guy into a powerful, confident and authoritative figure.
The people attending the ardfheis find themselves, not so much between a rock and a hard place, as between a Prime Time and the threat of Sunday newspapers carrying the Ben Dunne saga further. In that situation, they yearn for Bertie to prove that," he's tough, decisive, statesmanlike to talk, not just to them as leader of Fianna Fail, but to the nation as a potential Taoiseach.
If tonight he can do that, neither the tribunal nor the general election will hold insurmountable threats. To him, or to the party.