If the job of cheerleader for Bertie Ahern ever comes up, I'm going to have to pass on the pom-poms. No matter how good my application letter, I'd never get to a first interview, because although, as the phrase has it, "Bertie Ahern and I go back a long way," the duration of our acquaintance-ship is not matched by the closeness of our relationship.
That relationship has run the whole gamut from open competition through mutual mistrust to guarded tolerance and finally to respect for his achievements in Government - all shot through with humour.
The reason I say this is that I do not want what I'm about to write to be dismissed with the great Mandy Rice-Davies phrase, "Well, she would say that, wouldn't she?" Because my background is as a Fianna Fail politician, it's all too easy to assume passionate loyalty and affiliation on my part for all its leaders. Easy. But wrong.
It was not affection for Bertie Ahern that stopped me in my tracks when I read that sources close to Mary Harney were saying she had "told" the Taoiseach to put his representations on behalf of Philip Sheedy into the public domain or more particularly to let Dail Eireann know about it at the first opportunity. I didn't doubt that the journalist involved had got a good PD leak: the high moral ground address label was only thinly Tipp-exed out.
What stopped me in my tracks was the notion that a Tanaiste would have "told" a Taoiseach to do anything. Never mind the personalities, let's look at the relative roles here. It bothers me not a jot if Mary Harney puts Bertie Ahern off his bran muffin for a couple of days. But to be told that the prime minister of a nation is being instructed on what he must do by someone in his Cabinet gave me pause, especially given that the person in the dogmatic, instructional role represents a tiny, diminishing party.
To realise that this upending of the democratic hierarchy would probably go largely unquestioned, because of PD spin, makes it worse. We have been seduced into ignoring patently anti-democratic elitism by the repeated claim that it is used only for good causes. Except that one of the great truths is that the end does not justify the means. The PDs, ignoring that, repeatedly use the ostensible objective of keeping Fianna Fail pure to justify using whatever methodology is handiest.
Cutting down the distinction between Taoiseach and Tanaiste, cutting down the credibility of a Taoiseach by giving him moral instruction through a megaphone, cutting down the credibility of Government by halting Cabinet meetings and all the decisions of import to the State which would have been taken at those meetings - all of these actions have an immediate effect and a long-term effect.
The immediate effect is to make the PD leader feel better. Instructing the leader of the State into writing lines and then pinning them on the media blackboard is such an affirmation of one's moral probity. Enjoy, Mary, enjoy.
The wider, more long-term effect is one none of us can enjoy. What is being demonstrated is that PR is more important than parliament. Nobody can seriously claim that the Taoiseach's failure to announce his routine representations on behalf of both perpetrator and victim in this instance affected the national interest. It was ham-fisted. It was pointless (given that he'd already happily shared this apparently sensitive information, in a pub with a journalist who - quite rightly - wasn't particularly impressed by the revelation). But it wasn't earth-shattering in its implications.
What, then, was vindicated by Mary Harney's bringing the process of government to a halt? Nothing but her own need to be proven right.
Replayed, her role in the episode has the pettish tone all of us have resented at one time or another: "I told you to wear your hat and coat; I knew it was going to rain, but would you listen? Would you? Think you know it all, don't you? And look at the cold you have now. Probably give us all pneumonia . . ."
Politics is always trivialised when individuals get their personal (or small party) self-image mixed up with the national interest. However, what we're now seeing is rather deeper than that. Mary Harney has learned to apply the Archimedes principle to politics. Owning a pivot allows you to move the world. Indeed, given a choice, it may be better to have a pivot than to have a majority. Near-failure has a lot going for it. It gives the capacity to halt a Government and issue ultimatums to a Taoiseach.
The only problem about it (and this, by its nature is not something to worry the PDs) is that the use of pivotal power in this way does profound long-term damage to the body politic. Disaffection with the political system has to be propagated by such behaviour, confirming, as it does, the growing belief that it does not actually matter which way you vote if the party that does poorly on polling day ends up with ultimate power.
You could call it "breaking the mould". The PDs are breaking the democratic mould every chance they get and leaving posterity to pick up the pieces.
From their point of view, it's the only way to go. The reactive position they originally occupied in the public mind has eroded. The policies they originally pioneered are now mainstream. Their attempts to soften their image have failed.
Having said that the Progressive Democrats, in their self-serving use of the political pivot, are doing untold long-term damage to the democratic process, it would be ungenerous of me not to acknowledge their real contribution to Irish political culture. They undoubtedly invented a new form of entertainment that is likely to run and run. You could call it The Immorality Play.