Although there is always, writes John Waters, following the election of a new party leader, a degree of what my colleagues in The Ticket would call "buzz", this has lately been subject to the law of diminishing returns, what with the rapid turnover of leadership in all parties.
New leaders get short honeymoons and even shorter shrift from their party colleagues when they fail to meet the undiminishing expectations which accompany these phenomena.
Pat Rabbitte is the most interesting leader our system has thrown up of late, with the potential to become a catalytic figure at a time of possibly even more radical change than hitherto. He is able, intelligent and charismatic, without necessarily being as witty as his fans tend to assert. His roots in a rather scalded part of Co Mayo and lengthy period as a left-leaning public representative for one of the most challenging constituencies in Dublin give him a breadth of experience unique among party leaders.
He now leads a party which trades off representing the downtrodden, but which is really the Tannoy of the knowing and sanctimonious middle-classes. He faces an uphill task in hammering this lot into a popular movement for change.
His new year statement and first significant communication as party leader was interesting without being inspiring - an ideal combination to avoid excessive hype or expectations. There was predictable stuff about accountability of State institutions and the need for openness in the funding of politics. The trad red-rhetoric reference to the "right wing" complexion of the present Government will help rally the pink army, but won't ignite the public imagination.
The future of quality opposition lies not in leftist mantras but in articulating the enlightened self-interest of the comfortable in great equity and justice.
It has long confounded those on the left that, whereas they are the ones pushing for change, what they regard as more conservative forces get to drive the bus of progress.
Pat Rabbitte exhibited a hint of this puzzlement in what might be termed the note of Sticky triumphalist revisionism with which he kicked off his new year message, by the now traditional bid for ownership of change. "The historical impulses that shaped our politics for so long are diminishing," he noted. "New conditions and challenges invite the political parties to respond to the needs of a new generation of Irish people. Gone is the culture of victimhood and the propensity to blame the colonial oppressor; our failings, like our achievements, are now our own.
" Ironically, the party most rooted in the tradition of victimhood and whose political hegemony was maintained on the back of decades of emigration and tribal drum beating has proved most resilient. Fianna Fáil has adapted to change and has embraced the more pluralist and ecumenical approach to politics on the island pioneered by others."
Anyone who thinks that by articulating a conservative vision, Fianna Fáil is not being radical is missing the true meaning of events. The big arguments of recent decades were won not primarily because of the proddings of radicals and revisionists, but at least as much because of the countervailing pull of those who sought to justify and defend the way things had been before.
The process of change across many areas of society has occurred less because of the radical impatience of the left, than the tentative surrender of conservative forces to change they had become persuaded was in their own interests. This is true of economics, social legislation and the national question. It's the dialectic, Comrade! And the most vital enabler of our recent shifts towards new vistas has been the support provided by Fianna Fáil for that process of transformation.
The Labour Party has won few arguments, Democratic Left even fewer and the Workers' Party none. This is what renders short-sighted Pat Rabbitte's seeming belief that his chief duty resides in attacking Fianna Fáil. Since Fianna Fáil is the main party of government, some knockaboutery is to be expected, and accusing it of being the party of wealth will help keep the smoked salmon soldiers on the streets. And yet, he also wonders why, given the failure to distribute the benefits of the Celtic Tiger, "a majority of our people think Labour but don't vote Labour".
Accusing the Government of ignoring a large segment of the electorate which fails to exercise its franchise, he asserted: "Morally or politically Labour cannot afford to write off these people."
What he needs to do is put this political problem into its cultural context, to understand why what he terms " the natural Labour constituency" will choose to (a) not vote at all or (b) vote Fianna Fáil, before giving even theoretical consideration to supporting the party of James Connolly.
A Labour leader whose party piece is attacking Fianna Fáil is essentially biting his own tail. The ideal force for change would be a combination of Fianna Fáil's natural conservatism and Pat Rabbitte's natural impatience with it. Pat knows too that he will before long find himself dependent on both Fianna Fáil transfers and goodwill if he is to take his adhesive agenda into power and practice.