Some months ago I wrote here that the only thing which prevented this State from qualifying as a banana republic was that we didn't grow bananas.
The weather has improved since mid-October. The political climate has not.
We've had Charlie McCreevy's "incentivising" attack on the unemployed and their children; Brian Cowen's surly argument with the management of Tallaght Hospital and John O'Donoghue flapping about like a malignant scarecrow.
It's predictable stuff from the more backward of the two right-wing governments in the European Union: Thatcherism without the charm.
Then came the reduction of Charles Haughey's tax bill - for the money he'd admitted receiving from Ben Dunne. At a stroke, it dropped from £2 million to zero. And the appeal commissioner who'd made the decision turned out to be Bertie Ahern's brother-in-law.
Mr Ahern was more than usually confused. He'd been loyal to his former leader. Mr Haughey had promoted and heaped praise on him. After the 1989 coalition negotiations he called him "the most cunning, the most devious of them all".
Mr Ahern himself had appointed the commissioner when it looked as if Fianna Fail was on its way out of office in 1992. (It was - until Labour joined it in coalition.)
EVEN Mary Harney was sent reeling. Mr Ahern is struck speechless by Mr Haughey's apparitions. Ms Harney reacts differently: on RTE the other night she couldn't be stopped.
It was an extraordinary decision. Incomprehensible. She wished there was something the Government could do. But it couldn't. Nor could the Progressive Democrats.
She'd tried to find out why it happened. But failed. That was regrettable. But the Revenue Commissioners were bound to appeal. Then the case would be heard by the circuit court. And on and on.
But the most curious claim of a breathless broadcast was that Ministers were as outraged as the public. Well, that bangs Banagher.
Ministers outraged again?
Mr Ahern has been outraged by lousy standards in his party for a long time. He said so before, during and after his election as leader. He was driven up every tree in north Dublin by outrage at the Ray Burke affair.
He has been outraged by a whole series of events now being investigated by judges, court-appointed inspectors and Oireachtas committees.
And at the ardfheis he enlivened a dull evening with renewed outrage, and yet another promise of a clean sweep.
BUT the longer it goes on the less convincing outrage sounds - especially if you're in a position to do something about it. Mr Ahern is better placed than most, but he prefers to dither.
Of course there are corners of public life he and his colleagues can't reach. The real trouble lies in the corners which they can get at but are too fearful, too incompetent or too bent on staying in power to touch.
The pattern is familiar. The public has heard it all before. Dail questions go unanswered. Then a skeleton falls from its cupboard and there's a flurry of activity. A judge or inspector is called in, a tribunal or inquiry set in train.
The issue is then off limits until leaks appear or public hearings begin. Even then there's a chance that someone will go to the courts to prolong and complicate the affair.
Serious questioning is, well, out of the question.
In the meantime, we hear the usual complaints from those who see tribunals and inquiries as politics by another name. And, since politics means accountability, they're to be stopped at all costs.
So we're told there are too many tribunals, that they cost too much, that they're too complicated by far and that they never reach any conclusions. Some of this is true, though the real message is simpler: those who run affairs should not be held to account.
The public waits for someone to be tried, found guilty and jailed, and listens to the voices of the barrack-room lawyers and practising sycophants droning on.
THIS is a corrupt little country, they say; as if that made it all right for the rich and powerful to steal its resources and sell their influence.
But in an admittedly subjective survey our corruption rating places us half-way down a list of EU states. Behind the Scandinavians, ahead of the Italians and Greeks, within a whisker of the British.
However, there has been a significant increase in questions raised about the role of political leadership and its links with business during the last 20 years. And it would be foolish to deny that it began with Mr Haughey's arrival in office.
Some have always questioned the style and nature of his leadership, though most of those critics have been roundly abused for their doubts.
Garret FitzGerald spoke in 1979 of a flawed pedigree and was accused of misjudgment, puritanism and worse, even when it was clear that he was talking about Mr Haughey's politics, not his family.
Des O'Malley first questioned his leadership shortly afterwards, then challenged him in the parliamentary party. Mr O'Malley lost. But it was when he dared abstain in a Dail vote on contraception - although he'd been expelled from the parliamentary group - that he was fired for conduct unbecoming a member of Fianna Fail.
WHEN Dick Spring referred to a virus that was causing a cancer in the body politic, commentators said he too was guilty of wild exaggeration and thwarted ambition.
Some still say that political life would have been less lively - less colourful - if it hadn't been for what's known, with winks and nods, as the Haughey era.
Indeed some who affected surprise during and after the hearings of the McCracken tribunal knew all too well how their leader lived and ruled in what one of them lately called "the good years".
Others comfort themselves with the delusion that all parties and all leaders are the same. It isn't true. Others, too, have their skeletons and their share of trouble. Fianna Fail has had more than its share.
There was a time when anyone who said so was either disbelieved or accused of begrudgery. The problem for Mr Ahern and his colleagues is that that day has passed, but the legacy remains.
John Bruton was right to suggest that Mr Ahern needs to make clear - publicly and urgently - the distance which separates his leadership from that of Mr Haughey.
Because, as Ruairi Quinn said, the new leadership has failed its first test. It simply did not appreciate the outrage felt by people who believed, now more than ever, that there was one law for the rich and one for the poor.
As Pat Rabbitte and Michael Noonan repeatedly pointed out, it has been a bad week for Fianna Fail and the Government; it has been a bloody awful week for politics in this State.