InsidePolitics:The ongoing "will he, won't he" speculation about when the Taoiseach will dissolve the Dáil has put his own TDs under extreme stress, writes Stephen Collins.
Many of them are beginning to wonder whether the conflicting signals about the timing of the election mean that he has some great master plan up his sleeve or whether he is simply dithering from one day to the next.
It is not the first time that his supporters have wondered whether Ahern really is the great tactician, the most devious and cunning of them all, or whether he is simply gripped by indecision when tough choices have to be made.
The same question arose as far back as 1992 when he first made a tentative move to take over the leadership of the party after the departure of Charles Haughey, and has cropped up at regular intervals since.
For all that, Ahern has usually ended up coming out on top.
Back in 1992 he dithered before pulling out of the leadership race against Albert Reynolds. Yet a little over two years later the prize fell into his lap.
During the Northern talks process over the past 10 years there were frequent occasions when he shirked decisive action to force republicans to honour the commitments they made in the Belfast Agreement. In the end, though, he got what he wanted, and the deal will be sealed on May 8th.
The question now is whether the tactic of spinning out decisions to the last possible moment is the best way to decide on the date of the general election.
It certainly did work in 2002 when Ahern came within an ace of winning Fianna Fáil's first overall majority since 1977. The auguries are not nearly as good this time around, but it will not be clear for some weeks whether Ahern got it right or wrong.
It is clear that Fianna Fáil's timing and the tactics going into this campaign are very much Ahern's and his alone. He took the decision to go to the ardfheis with his list of election promises that stunned most of his Ministers. He is the one who has decided to keep people guessing about the date of the election until the last possible moment.
Ahern's desire to run a lap of honour to highlight his achievements on the North during the campaign is clearly an important factor in setting the election date. He is heading north for the establishment of the powersharing Assembly on May 8th; he will show Ian Paisley around the Battle of the Boyne site on May 11th; and on May 16th he will address a joint sitting of the Commons along with Tony Blair.
Not since John Redmond and Herbert Asquith put the Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons in 1912 have the leaders of nationalist Ireland and the UK been so closely united in an approach to dealing with the legacy of Irish history. Ahern is obviously hoping that voters will show their appreciation by giving him a third term and the precise timing of the election has been designed with that in mind.
There were strong arguments for going to the country last year, but Ahern made it plain all along that he was going to run the full five-year term just as he did with his first Fianna Fáil-PD coalition.
The problem about sticking to a clear timetable is that everybody else has known to within a couple of weeks when the election was going to be held. That allowed the Opposition parties to plan their strategy in the confident belief that it would be some time in the second half of May 2007. Fine Gael and Labour were presented with the opportunity of unveiling their tax-cutting plans, including their proposals on stamp duty, as well as their core election spending promises, before Fianna Fáil got to the stating blocks.
Ahern also put all the interest groups on notice about the best time to put maximum pressure on his Government. The timing of industrial action by the nurses was dictated by the knowledge of the election date. So was the dragging of heels by hospital consultants.
This combination of factors has left the Government exposed to continual attack, and its response has been all over the place. After the initial burst of election promises from the Opposition, Ministers maintained that they would not be rushed into auction politics. The Fianna Fáil tactic being touted at that stage was to let the Opposition exhaust itself and then come out with a coherent set of pledges at the beginning of the election campaign itself.
Instead, the Taoiseach took everybody, including his own side, by surprise by announcing almost all his election promises at the ardfheis. The tactic was so unexpected that it appears to have backfired. Instead of getting a bounce, Fianna Fáil continued to lose support in the polls.
All of which begs the question: can Ahern turn things around during a three-week election campaign?
In the past parties have won and lost elections during the campaign itself. In 1992 the Labour surge did not happen until midway during the campaign, while in the last election the PD bounce came very close to polling day.
Fighting a surge of unpopularity during the election is a different matter. In 1992 Fianna Fáil could do nothing to stem the tide after starting the campaign on the back foot.
Labour had the same problem in 1997, while in the last election Fine Gael could make no headway against the prevailing negative mood towards the party.
Ahern is clearly hoping that the hand of history will intervene on his behalf this time around.