If Fine Gael leaders had spent the last three years fighting the Government as vigorously as they fought each other this week, the party would now be better prepared for the most important general election of decades. As it is, Fine Gael has a week in which to decide how, and under whose leadership, a successful campaign is to be mounted; with which partners and on what appeal an alternative coalition may be presented to the electorate.
It's a tall order. But the object isn't confined to choosing a leader, sharpening images or knives and waiting for Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats to lose their footing in the sleaze that oozes from under the doors of Dublin Castle.
Fine Gael itself must express the outrage that most people feel at the Lawlor affair, the O'Flaherty affair, the Foley, Ellis and O'Keeffe affairs; at Burke and Haughey and their cronies who, if they didn't own the country already, could buy it cheap.
Fine Gael needs to say plainly where it stands on such issues as party funding and how, given the chance, it would not only restore the (electoral) fortunes of the party but revive public confidence in politics.
Fianna Fail claims all parties have been damaged by sleaze. This is true. But not all parties are capable of leading a renewal in public life: FF itself is no more fit for the job than persistent polluters are fit for environmental protection.
Every time Bertie Ahern repeats that he and the party are committed to the task - as he did on RTE radio on Sunday - he makes matters worse. Didn't they set up the tribunals? They didn't, the Oireachtas did. Fianna Fail had to be pressed or embarrassed into agreement.
Didn't they fire TDs for conduct unbecoming? They did. It was long ago; the name was O'Malley and the offence was failing to toe the republican party line. "I stand by the Republic," he said - and abstained in a division on Barry Desmond's reform of the law on contraception. ail bar is not at the good of it all: it's Liam Lawlor's friends, welcoming home another felon of our land.) What's another lie.
Of course Fine Gael has had its Lowry affair and the rows over Liam Cosgrave and local councillors. The complaint against John Bruton as a rule was not that he delayed too long but, from time to time, fired first and asked questions afterwards.
On Questions and Answers Bruton ruefully remarked that critics constantly spoke of his integrity "as if it didn't matter". It was more insidious than that. They spoke of his integrity as if it mattered - but only to him, not to the rest of the country. This echoes the sniping at Jack Lynch (Honest Jack) and Garret FitzGerald (Garret the Good) during Haughey's banishment after the arms crisis in the 1970s.
Then as now politics and politicians were felt to be on trial, as Frances Fitzgerald said on her way out of the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting which had refused to vote confidence in Bruton on Wednesday night.
She might have added that it fell to Fine Gael to respond to the charges, not just because Fianna Fail was in no position to do so, but because of FG's dominant position among the rest, its political ancestry and the need to mobilise as wide a range of supporters as possible.
But Fine Gael cannot presume its leadership of the rest will be accepted without question or some serious demands for change on its own part. It's curious and unfortunate that, although it has had more public attention in the last few days than in the rest of its term in opposition, so much has been said about image and so little about politics.
Yet the issues listed, unprompted, by the respondents to the Irish Times/MRBI poll on which the campaigners against Bruton relied, are those on which the public expects an election to be fought: health, housing, education, taxation and the economy at or close to the top.
Little has been said about how the party sees itself or its vision of Irish society in the next 10, 20 or 50 years.
The disagreement between Charlie McCreevy and major European institutions - the Commission and the European Investment Bank - over the Budget rumbles on. It has yet to be clearly identified by FG as part of the conflict between EU and US models of social and economic affairs.
One of the widening gaps between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is a result of different attitudes and alliances in the EU: FG is part of the powerful Christian Democratic alliance while FF is among the smallest and most scattered groups.
And have the contenders for leadership paid attention to the other parties and Independents in an increasingly complex pattern at home? What of potential allies before or after an election?
The message to those in Labour who lean towards coalition with Fianna Fail is clear: remember 1992; in 1997 the electorate did. And Fine Gael must remember that one of Bruton's significant achievements was his ability to unite and inspire colleagues from Labour and Democratic Left in the last coalition.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie