THE MEDIA comment on Brian Cowen's emergence as our next taoiseach has been almost uniformly favourable.
This has reflected the fact that he is clearly the ablest of his generation in Fianna Fáil, and that those who know him personally - as many journalists do - have found him to be a warm person, with no "side" and a good sense of humour, albeit with a capacity to show impatience and toughness which, if controlled, can be potent political weapons.
Some commentators have, however, remarked that from the several departments he has led they recall few outstanding ministerial initiatives. They say that he has been a "safe pair of hands" rather than an author of new ideas. However, there are worse things than a safe pair of hands in politics, where ministers often have more capacity to do harm than to do good!
Moreover, there has been a tendency to overlook the fact that Brian Cowen proved to be a very able minister for foreign affairs. Incidentally, within the EU his experience in that post will stand to him hugely when he takes his place in the European Council of Heads of Government.
Brian Cowen's handling of the presidency of the Security Council at the time of 9/11 was sure-footed, and he subsequently authorised our Permanent Representative at the UN to make it clear that we did not regard the Resolution 1441 as having authorised the invasion of Iraq without fresh authority from the Security Council. That courageous and principled stance was lost on many people as a result of the present Taoiseach's subsequent fudging of this issue in an effort to please the US.
Most people may be more inclined to base their assessment of his likely performance as our next taoiseach on his actions as Minister for Finance. This aspect of his career thus deserves some attention.
Now, during the term of office of his predecessor, Charlie McCreevy, there had been a 20 per cent deterioration in the competitiveness of our economy vis-a-vis the rest of the EU, reflecting the overheating of the economy because of his virtual doubling of the rate of increase in public spending at the very time when we were reaching full employment and when, through our impending membership of the single currency, we were also about to lose our capacity to offset such fiscal imprudence by a devaluation of our currency.
Unhappily in key sectors such as health, education, public housing or public transport there was relatively little to show for that feat of extravagance, which doubled our inflation rate to almost 4.5 per cent - twice that of the rest of the EU. Since then, instead of our exports rising annually at twice the global rate, as previously, we have been losing ground every year - with our goods exports growing at barely one-fifth of the global rate.
What has Brian Cowen been able to do about this unfortunate inheritance? In a world in which wages can move only upwards he has clearly been unable to retrieve past damage, but he has managed since then to reduce the growth of public spending by one-third, and has cut by two-thirds the annual growth of the volume of goods consumed in running the country. He deserves credit for that restraint, even though he can, I think, be faulted for having allowed the €4 billion budget surplus of 2006 to be turned into a deficit of about the same magnitude this year, reducing room for manoeuvre.
However, he has also shown more sensitivity than his predecessor to our social needs - which suggests that when the current recession ends we might see some belated progress in minimising social inequity, perhaps the most neglected area of government policy throughout the past decade.
However, his leadership skills will be severely tested as he tackles the task of persuading the trade unions, especially in the public sector, that their members' medium-term interests will be best served, and employment levels best maintained, by not demanding that wages catch up with prices at this point.
There are two ways in which the new taoiseach can endeavour to win some moral authority. First of all he can - and I believe should - announce that he is cancelling the ministerial pay increase, which the Taoiseach agreed only to postpone.
As I argued in this column when this increase was proposed, the basis of that award was misplaced because it sought to relate the salaries of ministers to those of executives in the private commercial sector. That such a relationship is inappropriate is almost universally recognised in other European countries, which is clear from the fact that the salary levels proposed for our Ministers are a good deal higher than in other EU states, including some much larger than Ireland.
Secondly, he should insist on ruthless action to ensure that importers of goods from Britain and the US pass on to consumers the full benefits of the recent sharp fall in the value of both sterling and the dollar.
Tough action could gain the Government a measure of moral authority, which they will certainly require if they are to secure public support for wage moderation in current circumstances.
Finally, looking farther ahead, he will have an opportunity in due course, after the tribunals have reported, to retrieve the soiled reputation of Irish politics by taking effective action to end both the recent practice - which started only about 20 years ago - of individual politicians accepting significant political donations, and secondly of political parties accepting funding from businesses that may be interested in securing political support for their private interests at the expense of the common good of Irish society.
If Brian Cowen were thus to restore the integrity of national politics to the level that was common to all our political parties during the first half century of Irish independence, he would deserve and receive the gratitude of future generations of our people.