"I GOT within 12 hours of being Taoiseach," says Bertie Ahern, a mite wistfully, "I just hope I get a bit closer this time." He still clearly remembers picking up the phone at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, December 6th, 1994. Dick Spring was on the line. Only hours before becoming Taoiseach, the names of Bertie Ahern's prospective Cabinet were already written out.
But Dick's tidings did not make happy listening.
"He said the deal was off. . . I don't think I had much discussion with him. . . I have no great difference with the man. He is entitled to his opinion. He walked out on Garret. He walked out on the deal I had with him in 1994. I assume the reason he walked out was he saw it as an opportunity to walk from what he believed was a mistake he had made in 1992...
I had honourably undertaken a new pact. I believed that until the early hours of that Tuesday morning...
Power had slipped tantalisingly from Bertie Ahern's clasp. He had turned 43 the previous September and would have been the second youngest head of government in the history of the State. (The youngest was W.T. Cosgrave.)
Now, 2 1/2 years older, and perhaps a bit wiser, the sixth Fianna Fail leader gets a second dance with destiny.
But a measure of the distance twixt cup and lip came at the weekend when the Drumcondra boy suddenly found himself at the centre of a row over an answer he gave on Saturday night's Politics Programme on RTE. Asked by Caroline Erskine if he would, as Taoiseach, meet Sinn Fein leaders, Mr Ahern gave a firm "yes".
As the storm broke around him, even before the programme was aired, he and his advisers moved with haste to limit the potential damage. He had presumed, he made clear yesterday, that Ms Erskine's question was in the context of an IRA ceasefire. "It would never arise in my head to meet them out of any context other than an unequivocal ceasefire," he adds.
In spite of his and the party's recent increased ratings in the polls, he knows that securing power won't be easy. Quoting Charlie Haughey's cagey remark that "there is only one real poll", he merely acknowledges that the latest opinion poll results "are giving us a good lift".
But I still think it will be close.
"I don't see a swing either way. It's going to be tight ... I don't know how many seats we will win. We lost 10 the last time. We're in the business of trying to get them all back if we can. It's hard enough in good economic times that we created, to do that."
Fianna Fail's core vote has been sitting on or around the 37 per cent mark to succeed, the party must pull a share of the so called "floating vote", and transfers are imperative. Local voting arrangements with the Progressive Democrats will be vital to assist in securing those transfers, though there will not be a formal pact between the two parties.
The Green Party, he hopes, will also be particularly sympathetic to Fianna Fail because the party developed the "Green Presidency when Ireland held the EU presidency in 1990.
So, does he envisage, in the event of a hung Dail, an arrangement incorporating the Greens and Independents?
"Well, I have to say the idea of the Rainbow being back with three parties to bring us into the 21st century makes me shiver. Equally, the idea of hung Dails would upset me greatly because we had it before and it meant about five years of the economy going down the tubes. So we don't need that."
But, if push comes to shove few believe he would turn his back on negotiating a three legged government - no matter how unsavoury the prospect.
Predicting a dirty election campaign, Bertie Ahern wonders whether he and his party are paranoid, and concludes that they are not.
If a Fianna Fail member is in trouble", caught in a blast of negative publicity, he languishes there "for three days"; if a member of another party is in the same position, "the story is dead before lunchtime".
"Fianna Fail does not have a culture of strokes - the kind of thing Jim Mitchell talks about - and people in the party are deeply resentful about this. It is deeply unfair and hurtful. When we do something wrong, we take our medicine. For example, we walked out of government over an issue that was not life threatening in the autumn of 1994. But these things are remembered far more than the work we did since the foundation of the State to make this country successful."
Accepting that the insinuation of sulphur lingers, he insists that this is so because "our political opponents run with it".
"There is a demonising of Fianna Fail by our opponents. It seems to me there is a file in at least one party HQ that is pulled out before every election and rerun again. It says `Dirty Tricks Against Fianna Fail".
As leader, he has set out strict standards of behaviour for his parliamentary party.
"The past," say some of his supporters "is a foreign land" but the ghost of history has come to haunt him in the shape of the Dunnes payments to politicians. Charles Haughey, his political mentor, and the man who called him "the most cunning and ruthless of them all", has been accused of accepting £1.3 million in payments from Ben Dunne at last month's ardfheis Mr Ahern had to take a surgical knife to the link with the former Taoiseach.
Did that bruise him and strain relations?
"I have tremendous admiration for Charles Haughey. His contribution to the life and well being of this country in so many areas has been immense. Nothing can take that away from him. I did not distance myself from him, in my view. I distanced myself from what I believe are unacceptable practices."
Does he keep in contact with Mr Haughey?
No, he says; his only recent contact with his former leader was when he was ill. "I contacted him and visited him at that stage. I did not discuss the matters of the Tribunal. I had written contact with him. It was conducted under my direction and signed by the [Fianna Fail] general secretary, Pat Farrell, in relation to the tribunal and matters relating to the party," he says. (Mr Haughey did not write back.)
"I made Fianna Fail's position very clear at the ardfheis. Nobody could read any ambiguous signs into it. In justice and fairness, every one is innocent until proven guilty. Nothing less is just or right.
The "unacceptable practice" to which he refers occurs when politics can be brought into disrepute, "where the ordinary person sees politicians in a position that could be used or abused on receiving vast amounts of money from vastly wealthy people".
"There are laws and rules governing political donations. I will comply with the law. Nobody can explain sums that go well in excess of £1 million, and I distanced the party from that kind of practice. We called for the tribunal and insisted that it do its entire work without let or hindrance from anyone. I want the tribunal followed through to the ninth degree and to see its report, findings and conclusions made absolutely clear to the people. That is what is important.
Some were surprised at the dexterity with which he moved to limit damage to his party. Bertie Ahern is seen as the ultimate consensus man, one who prefers cooperation to confrontation, almost too willing to avoid a conflict. But, he insists, he does hold passionate views, from the North to the way the economy should be run. He just doesn't "go around carrying strong views on my sleeve on every single aspect of Irish life".
It is far better to gain agreement "than preaching off the top of some hill. Rhetoric sounds great, but not achieving anything is failure".
Above all, his self image is of "a practical person". Sometimes people say to him, "you're not ferociously strong in your views on this, that or the other". But, while it is very easy to have strong views, "it is a question of whether they are realistic or sensible".
If, 10 years ago, he had taken a biased view during negotiations on the Programme for National Recovery, he would have achieved nothing. Success lies in setting down targets and getting people to agree, and this philosophy is his guiding principle as leader of Fianna Fail, he explains. "You cannot do that, on the one hand, and yet march around, parading all kinds of strong line views."
Now he faces the greatest challenge of his political life. Failure to take Fianna Fail back into government would almost certainly put his leadership under threat. If he is to form a coalition, it will most likely be with the Progressive Democrats - provided they manage to secure the magical 84 seats together.
Judging by her admiring remarks, PD leader Mary Harney holds him in high esteem. He, happily, thinks she is "an excellent leader of her own party, with a high record of political achievement, commitment and integrity".
While he will not be pressed on the shape of their possible Cabinet, he says he "would not be averse to Ms Harney becoming his Tanaiste. "It depends on seats. But one thing I am certain about. From day one we should make a commitment to stay in government for five years and be stable and confident.
"My aim is to agree a programme of government and, if it comes that it is the Progressive Democrats, I will have no difficulties whatsoever with personalities and I will work out a programme with Mary Harney to the best of our ability."
And, what about Michael McDowell, the forceful bete noire of the last Fianna Fail/PD alliance who, in those angst ridden days, repelled the minds and hearts of so many Fianna Failers? "I see Mary Harney as the leader. I will lead my party in negotiations and she will lead hers. I do not see any difficulties - if that is the way it shapes up."
Controversial water charges are sure to be part of that would be programme. According to Bertie Ahern, his party's position is "comprehensive and sensible". But there will be no going back to water charges. Under a Government led by him, central funding would be paid to local authorities based on the criterion that they can manage it in a more flexible way - provided they meet specific targets.
However, he does not envisage water metering - an issue very close to Mary Harney's heart - in the short term. It is, in his view, "a very long term strategy". The abolition of water charges by this Government has "reversed the acceptance" of these rates.
"It is no good in politics devising policies that do not have the support of people and cannot win the support of people," he says.
Life, in Bertie Ahern's book, is a series of challenges. One challenge awaiting him is the enormous task of poverty and urban decline and the kind of marginalisation that he sees in his own Dublin Central constituency every day.
"I see it as a challenge and I see opportunities. I tend to look at life very much as a challenge that has to be overcome and the opportunity to do something about it. I am not one who suffers, who says, `Oh my God, what can I do?'" he says.
Under his guidance, Fianna Fail has an agreed programme of work for the next government, most of which has been unveiled through a series of policy documents: a new boost to the peace process; tight public spending; a crackdown on crime; reform of the criminal justice system, the Garda, prisons and the courts; an assault on illicit drugs.
But he stresses "the preventive approach", the reasons why people, particularly the young, get into crime, especially drugs, and how options can be presented to them. The new government must "go back and look at the root causes" and pour resources into education so that everyone is basically equipped, at least, to join the mainstream workforce.
Meanwhile, he's a bit sick of the idea of the snarling Celtic Tiger which, of course, was originally Fianna Fail's kitten. "People tell me the boom times are everywhere, that economic growth is raising all boats; they tell me about the new industries.
"But 18,000 people in my constituency are unemployed. In parts of my constituency there is practically nobody in third level education. There are vast housing areas in need of basic improvements like proper sanitary facilities, the removal of graffiti ... these are still here to be addressed."
On taxation, he would oversee the introduction of a 20 per cent tax rate for people entering the workforce or coming off the dole. This innovation, he promises, "will begin immediately" while, over the lifetime of the government, those in the higher 48 per cent band would end up paying less than 50 per cent in total when levies and tax are added together.
His administration would adjust bands and allowance to bring greater numbers into the 26 per cent net.
To the consternation of his opponents, Bertie Ahern and his party now say they would introduce a minimum wage to prevent the exploitation of those in low paid employment. This is not a position he held heretofore. Has an election provoked this?
"I was against it for one reason - Britain did not have it and this was a competitive disadvantage vis a vis Britain. That reason is removed because the new British Labour government is adopting a minimum wage policy."
One of Bertie Ahern's great strengths is his ordinariness, his agility with the common touch. "You have to go to the ground to understand the people you want to represent. You have to be out there with them, to be close to them. I do not have a difficulty as a person going to an IBEC lunch and discussing how we should move forward . .. or directives from Brussels, and I have no difficulty going into the poorest areas of the country, be they in Dublin, Cork or Limerick or anywhere else, and addressing disadvantage and how we can deal with the problem."
Highly critical of the Taoiseach's handling of the peace process, he claims a strenuous effort must be made by both new governments to get all parties into talks. A total cessation of violence must be accompanied by "confidence building measures" and "leaps of trust" to find a political settlement based on the three strand arrangement.
"I think it is possible. It is going to be difficult. It is going to require a lot of time. Unfortunately, grave mistakes were made by most people over the past 2 1/2 years.
The procrastination of the British government, the "mistake of the Irish Government in grabbing the ball on Washington 3" and the IRA's decision to return to violence all contributed to the collapse of the peace process. The unionists, meanwhile, latched on to the Irish Government's approach to Washington 3 - decommissioning in advance of talks - to stall the process.
Where does his predecessor, Albert Reynolds, come into the scenario? Mr Ahern said previously he sees a role for him - "a man of tremendous experience who has built trust and confidence". "He would be involved as an envoy," he says. "Because of his contacts and experience, he would be extremely helpful . .. a mediation type role that the Americans are past masters at."
Meanwhile, Fianna Fail gave the Rainbow Coalition "the keys to the blooming orchard". However, when problems come, as they inevitably will, the present combination, if reelected, will be exposed as inherently unstable. So far, they have not been tested.
"You can see the problems coming. Less money from Brussels. More difficult reform of the CAP. More difficult international trade agreements. Eastern Europe stepping up its exports to the European Community... The Government might get away with it now but it is the wrong policy for the future. As well as that, we are building a high expenditure base into the system which we are going to have difficulties regulating in the future."
Even with the new Labour government in Britain, it seems Britain will not go into EMU, initially at least. This will create a negative spinoff for the Irish economy, particularly the smaller industries. Though it could be a "difficult period", it is still the correct decision for Ireland to move with the first phase, he says.
It is critical that Ireland control its fiscal policy and fully satisfy the criteria for EMU on "day one". Our interest and inflation rates, the declining ratio of debt to national output, must all be maintained consistently into the future.
"This Government set targets and then ignored them. We should now be working to eliminate the Exchequer borrowing requirement over the lifetime of the next government.
"In these great times for the economy, mar dhea, we are borrowing £2.2 billion in the next three years and we still have a quarter of a million unemployed, 1.6 million dependants, and 20,000 people dropping out of the education system every year."
Abortion was an issue that threatened to dog his party earlier this year. His "personal view" is to allow the people have their say "but have their say on something that is worked out in advance".
"I do not see it as `yes' or `no'. It is not a straight question. We have tried to unravel the medical and ethical issues in opposition. If we are elected to government, we are going to deal with this issue. We are not going to run away from it."
Just weeks from polling, Bertie Ahern leads a party that he claims he has turned into a policy driven machine.
"The people never voted the Rainbow in. The Rainbow was a formulation that arose from extraordinary circumstances. The people have an opportunity to break away from what they never voted for and transfer to us because they will get from us honest, coherent government for the next five years.
Was he stung by Dick Spring's decisive slamming of the door in his party's face?
"That's his call. He does not want anything to do with us and he's entitled to his opinion."
When Bertie Ahern remembers December 1994, it keeps his hopes of becoming Taoiseach ice cool.