Anyone can mix two metaphors, writes Frank McNally
I've done it myself, often enough. But the Taoiseach killed three birds with a rolling stone on Monday when he refused to play "smokes and daggers" with the issue of his pay increase. Now that sort of thing takes real talent.
In one apparently simple phrase, Mr Ahern condemned most of the main weaknesses of Irish politics: the constant gamesmanship (snakes and ladders); the conjuring with statistics (smoke and mirrors); and the frequent melodramatic intrigues (cloak-and-dagger) so beloved of the media.
This was a rare glimpse inside a mind where, clearly, a lot is going on. All successful politicians are subtle thinkers, needing, as they do, to keep several balls of steel in hot air at the same time. But Bertie Ahern is in a class of his own. This is a man who could draw a bottom line in the sand and then sell it to Arabs. That's how he got to the top.
I know there are those who will say that, for their cut-out-and-keep quality, the Taoiseach's malapropisms are not quite in the same league as the US president's.
Mr Bush is indeed hard to beat. He once sympathised with low-paid Americans about how difficult it is to "put food on your family". Even more memorably, during a visit to the Danish prime minister - a political ally - a few years back, he looked forward to enjoying "a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend".
Personally, I think a bird in the hand is worth two Bushisms any day. But I have no doubt that the Taoiseach could hold his own canoe without a paddle against the president. Which is why I'd love to see a competition between the two men: a live, head-to-head word-association contest of the kind rappers have, with the audience deciding afterwards who had said the funniest things.
Both may soon have time on their hands, after all; and both will probably feel like lame ducks out of troubled water when they retire.
They might well be up for such a gig, as an alternative to the boring lecture circuit. Yes, a Bush and Bertie show could open up a Pandora's box of worms; but I bet the two men would get on like a horse on fire. If there's a promoter out there looking for something new, I suggest he should grab this bull by the horns now and run with it while it's still hot.
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I agree with Fintan Tuohy (Letters, Tuesday) that Dáil representation should be divorced from the "flag-waving micro-patriotism" of county-based constituencies. Yes, of course the best people should be elected to the national parliament, regardless of county origins. And maybe the list system is, as Fintan suggests, the solution.
But any meaningful reform would also need to address the shocking over-representation of the Irish electorate - a phenomenon that, if replicated in the UK, would result in some 2,500 MPs. We must, sooner or later, downsize the Dáil. And I suggest that the health service has pointed a possible way forward.
Under my proposal, the local parish-pump TD would be phased out over a number of years in favour of the establishment of a number of "centres of excellence" (eight honours in the Leaving Cert, minimum), as their replacements would be called.
These new super-TDs would be located in large population centres such as Navan and Athlone. And instead of providing mere "clinics", as old-fashioned political representatives do, they would operate full-scale A&E departments, 24 hours a day, catering for everything from pot-hole filling to constitutional reform.
I am not decrying the existing system, which has contributed to the State's latter-day success story. In the old Ireland, where competition was a dirty word, only the savage infighting between party colleagues who shared a constituency suggested there was another way. Their dog-eat-dog attitude and constant attempts to undercut each other could be unpleasant at times, but the consumer always benefited. So, in their own fashion, the multi-seat constituencies paved the way for Ryanair.
But the new Ireland is here. And the Oireachtas must be about the last organisation in it that has not undergone a rationalisation process in recent years, aimed at reducing the cost-base and streamlining operations to ensure that it is better able to meet the challenges of blah blah blah and whatever you're having yourself, going forward.
The Dáil currently employs 166 TDs. At a conservative estimate (I can offer a Labour estimate too if anyone's interested), it could maintain its core operations on about half that number. This would still allow for the retention of a number of local TDs in outlying areas, who would provide day clinics and emergency weekend services, while referring hard cases to the centres of excellence.
No, such a reform would not be easily achieved. It would require a leader of great subtlety and cunning; a leader, ideally, who was not planning to stand for election again himself; perhaps even a leader who needed to do something dramatic to justify his latest pay increase. Proficiency in the use of smokes and daggers would be a big help too.