Many moons ago politicians and commentators looked with impatience to the day when we would emerge from Civil War politics and join the rest of the modern world in what amounted to ideological argument.
Instead of harking back to where our parents or grandparents stood in the 1920s, our ideal debate would be about the needs of citizens and society now. In the beginning this didn't mean discussing the ownership, control and development of our natural resources. For generations we'd been taught that we didn't have any.
Ironically, the first serious programme for economic development was introduced without fuss. The debate about who owned and controlled our natural resources did not begin in earnest until we joined the European Community. And, for at least 20 years, we were all but overwhelmed by the conflict in Northern Ireland and the struggle to keep our heads above water muddied by scandal after scandal.
Then, without warning, Francis Fukuyama stepped onto the international stage to announce the end of history. Ideological divisions, we were told, had come and gone; left and right were redundant.
To insist on their relevance now would be to miss the bland beginnings of the new world order. But, as anyone who has watched the dole queues grow, paid attention to McCreevy's cheerleaders or read the O'Reilly newspapers of late will tell you, ideological divisions haven't vanished, they've simply changed appearance.
The economic cheerleaders - McDowells, Barretts, Coopers - have had their way. For the last 41/2 years, their views have gone unchallenged. Like Martin O'Donoghue with the 1977 manifesto, they and the hard chaws of the 1997-2002 coalition have had the theoretical field to themselves - and a country to experiment with.
But, if the 1977 manifesto risked - and lost - all on a spending programme from which it took us almost 20 years to recover, the right-wingers of the past five years have had their hands on money beyond their wildest dreams and - tragically for the rest of us, as it now seems - lost the pot.
And the Opposition has begun to realise what opportunities it has lost by caution or cowardice. How it has failed to point out that Bertie Ahern, grinning from every pillar and post, is about as useful to the electorate as the O'Reillys, grinning from every family publication, are to an Eircom shareholder. Come to think of it, it's hard to tell the difference these days between news of the O'Reilly family fortunes and the common or garden stuff that appears in the Independent group newspapers.
What you will not find in many cases where you might expect to find it is a declaration of interest. So readers following the hearings of the Flood tribunal in Independent newspapers may have been puzzled by the difference between the deeply critical pieces of the early days and the saturation coverage of Denis O'Brien's affairs before Valentia triumphed in the struggle for Eircom.
The Independent's stance since payback time became its motto is one of the changes observers must bear in mind as they watch the rumbustious days leading to the election.
Rumbustious days, indeed, as everyone realises what little time remains before the 28th Dβil comes to an end and some of the smartest politicians in the country try to persuade us to forget the myriad task forces with their unfinished business - what we'd always known about the futility of trying to squeeze a solution to the Irish problem of abortion into the toothpaste tube of the Constitution.
In a wonderfully limp speech to the Dβil on Tuesday, Mary Harney declared: "I have stated in the House before, and it remains my view, that it would be unwise to proceed finally to a referendum unless sufficiently broad, middle-ground support for the proposition is apparent." Now, there's conviction for you. It allowed Ruair∅ Quinn to claim that if he and Harney had changed places he knew what she would have said of him: "If I were in her position proposing this amendment she would talk of tragedy and betrayals. She would accuse me of being anti-woman."
It also provoked Liz McManus to remind a radio audience of the po-faced nonsense of Bertie Ahern and his colleagues with their pretence at a search for consensus. There hadn't been consensus on the issue from the start. There wasn't consensus in the all-party committee which debated the issue for four years.
And there won't be consensus in the Oireachtas committee to which the Government and its Independent allies have now consigned the 25th Amendment to the Constitution Bill. The Bill prepares the ground for a referendum on abortion in February.
But Michael Noonan described its consignment to the committee as a disgrace. It was unprecedented for the committee stage of a Bill advocating change in the Constitution to be taken other than in the House. As Labour officials point out, when the party published a Bill to enable the divorce referendum in 1995 the first to object were the leaders of the Progressive Democrats. The grounds were that it contained "detailed and specific" conditions to be imported into the Constitution.
The PDs haven't quoted their authority for this view. Could it be that their legal advice in 1995 came from Michael McDowell, now happily endorsing the 25th amendment Bill which contains not only a few "detailed and specific" paragraphs but an entire Bill?
dwalsh@irish-times.ie