And so another August. It's good to be alive in this wind-down time of the year, but not so good as to allow yourself take your eye off the ball. August has a strange reputation. For the most part it is the safe period in politics: nothing much happens, or at least is not supposed to happen during these days. So relax.
The trouble is that August has a habit of not always playing by the rules. Drapier doesn't have to remind his readers of August four years ago when the report of the beef tribunal wrecked August for many of us, bringing us scurrying back to Dublin to try to make head or tail of it all and begin that process which resulted in the political divorce between Albert Reynolds and Dick Spring.
It was in an earlier August that the first stirrings of what became the golden circle scandals, Greencore, Telecom and so forth, began to dribble out. Quietly at first, and then gaining unstoppable momentum.
Indeed Drapier would recommend to some student in search of a thesis topic that August would repay study. The truth is that there has not been a quiet August this past decade. Last year the first stirrings of the Ray Burke story began to emerge, and look where we are now.
So Drapier simply says, watch out. Something will happen this month and it will happen because somebody's PR adviser is going to be too clever by half. You can't move down a political corridor these days without running into a PR guru. Some are good, some less so, but all are expensive and have to justify their high fees by doing something or other.
Drapier has no doubt that at this very moment, over expensive cocktails in some upmarket hotel, one of these people is advising a client with a bad story to tell to get it out in August. There's a better chance of it being buried or out of the way by the time serious business starts again in September.
All Drapier can say is: don't listen to such advice. The world is a sharper place these days. There are fewer hiding places.
Drapier has no doubt that he will not be listened to and that if the past is any guide something big will happen before the month is out. Remember it's usually the unexpected which happens.
One thing absent from much of the end-of-session commentary so far this year is the position of John Bruton. In previous years when he was leader of the opposition there would be dozens of August articles telling him that the game was up, that he was the worst leader of the opposition, going nowhere, it was time to move on, maybe even wind up his party.
Much of the stuff at the time was vicious, some of it highly personal, and no wonder Bruton chose to use a long spoon when he supped with the media after he became Taoiseach. He had no reason to like many of them and even less to trust them. However, that was then and this is now, and the big difference between Bruton then and Bruton now is very simple. He does not have to prove he can be a competent and effective Taoiseach: he has shown that he can be. That in itself is an enormous plus for any leader of the opposition and puts him on a different plane when the real electoral battle starts.
There is another difference between then and now, and that is in Bruton's relationship with Ruairi Quinn. Bruton's relationship with Dick Spring before 1992 was poisonous and as much as anything else it was personal chemistry which prevented the formation of a rainbow government in 1992. In the end Dick Spring and the Labour Party probably paid a higher price for that decision, but that, as they say, is history.
Between Bruton and Quinn today there is a civilised mature relationship. Bruton knows that the only way he will be Taoiseach again is with Labour; he knows the logic of a proportional representation system is coalition government; he knows that coalitions can work and that the people have consistently refused since 1977 to give any one party an overall majority and are unlikely to do so again.
Bruton long ago learned, and won't easily forget, that such a government requires compromise and mutual respect, straight talking and plain dealing. It's the only way a coalition can work, at least in any sustainable way.
Drapier can hear people saying that Bruton has no option but to behave this way but that Quinn always has the option of a deal with Fianna Fail, and secretly isn't that what he would prefer? Quinn will talk for himself, and Drapier has always found him to be straight and upfront. Being leader of the Labour Party is probably the most difficult job in Irish politics because no matter how well a Labour leader is doing he will have to cope with the "awkward tendency" or bolshie brigade in his own party whose natural instinct is to be against, and in particular to be against the current party leader whoever he or she may be.
Drapier does not buy the view that Quinn is some sort of closet Fianna Failer. Quinn is Labour through and through and takes his politics seriously. He thinks for himself and has an international perspective which few enough of us have. When the time comes he will do what is in the best interests of his own party and take the consequences.
For the moment, however, Drapier suspects he has little appetite for an alliance with Fianna Fail, especially with so much tribunal baggage floating around, to land no one knows where, and given the Supreme Court decision likely to be with us right up to the election.
Drapier's point, however, is that between Bruton and Quinn there is none of the personal prickliness which existed between Bruton and Spring in 1992. They have worked together in government and know they can do it again, and each has shown in government a high level of competence.
In a funny way Drapier thinks that when the next election comes the electorate will rank competence as a key factor in deciding between politicians and parties. Competence and integrity become particularly important at a time of little ideological difference, in this age of consensus politics and at a time when people are becoming very conscious of standards.
Bruton and Quinn have shown they have no shortage of either but, in each case, the problem is how to raise their front benches and their parties to the same levels of performance and commitment each has shown in his own leadership. That's the real challenge for each, a theme Drapier will return to shortly. Unless, that is, the August catastrophe happens before then.