Fine Gael, like the oldest swinger in town imagining a new hairstyle will change his romantic fortunes, thinks a new face on the posters will arrest its decline. It is, in every sense, a vain hope.
Fine Gael in the FitzGerald years created the conditions now hastening its obsolescence. To challenge Fianna Fail's electoral pre-eminence, it made a number of fundamental compromises with its character, and created a quasi-ideological arena to transcend and conceal these compromises.
Fine Gael is a deeply conservative party, on to which a liberal ethos has been grafted with limited success. In the FitzGerald years, it was possible to dress up the party's incoherence as evidence of a modernising dynamic. In truth, the interaction of the two strains created an inertia, far worse than any problems of identity. Liberals had to dilute their message in deference to the conservative rump, and conservatives to constrain their inclinations for fear of damaging the party's chances with the new middle class. Thus, FG never achieved synthesis between its differing elements, and became a party standing for nothing and everything.
This condition was ameliorated somewhat by the infamous National Handlers' successful introduction of a new agenda to Irish politics - the notion that Fianna Fail was intrinsically corrupt and Fine Gael fundamentally moral. Fine Gael concealed its lack of coherence by reducing politics to a morality play. Playing the Good Guy against the Great National Bastard, Charles Haughey, allowed Garret FitzGerald to balance the two factions within his party.
John Bruton personified FG's duality to a remarkable degree. Although one of the celebrated Young Tigers, whose radical liberalism epitomised the spirit of the Just Society, Bruton was actually of a more traditional stamp. His wife, Finola, has been one of the most coherent conservative voices in this society, but it often seemed that elements of the party her husband led were least enamoured of what she had to say. Like Garret FitzGerald, John Bruton's selling point was his appearance of moral probity.
But the politics of piety backfired on Fine Gael. Firstly, it was such a good routine that others soon got in on the act. Dick Spring turned out to be even better at it than Garret the Good. The Progressive Democrats created a whole new niche as The Party of Integrity. Then the Anything But Fianna Fail alliance in the media began to adapt the message as a means of wielding power vicariously.
Until 1989, the main issue for those seeking to impose their will on Irish society was how to erode Fianna Fail's support base. But the strategy contained the seeds of its own destruction. While FF had a smell of holding power alone, it clung to its "no coalitions" core value, which meant the issue of who would rule was one of simple arithmetic. Either FF had an overall majority or a Fine Gael-led coalition took power.
But the 1989 decision of the PDs to put power before principle and coalesce with the Haughey-led Fianna Fail - and perhaps more fundamentally, FF's acquiescence - introduced an element of promiscuity which transformed the political landscape. Until then, the hope was that FF could be gradually diminished, while Fine Gael and Labour grew. But with the "core value" abolished, the question became whether FF could find a partner. Because the two main candidates were at opposite ends ideologically, competition increased the odds in its favour. Thus, even in relative decline, FF increased its choices, ensuring access to power for as long as it could find willing partners.
The outcome of the pseudo-moral war was that, utterly contrary to expectations, FF held its ground, while the other parties, even less sure of obtaining power than before, shared the left-overs. Fine Gael, because it alone did not have the opportunity to coalesce with FF, came out worst of all. Once this situation was perceived, the media emphasis shifted to deterring other parties from entering or remaining in coalitions with FF. This strategy certainly undermined two FF-led coalitions between 1989 and 1994, and might have done likewise with the present administration, except it finally dawned on the PDs that, by collaborating in the media's game of musical chairs, they were hastening their own destruction.
Experience was beginning to show that, whereas Fianna Fail might be punished for misbehaviour, those who sought to bring it to book were not being given credit for their righteousness. Only by staying in government and being associated with the achievements of the administration, had the junior partner any chance of survival. Moreover, the politics of pseudo-morality had tainted politicians beyond FF. Even Fine Gael had become unfavourably implicated in the morality play of its own creation, which neutralised that territory as far as political point-scoring was concerned.
The PDs and Labour are now in open competition to get into bed with FF, leaving FG nursing its pseudo-principles on the sidelines. Thus, barring an electoral meltdown, Fine Gael has a negligible chance of attaining power.
jwaters@irish-times.ie