Micheal canvassing is excruciating in a different way to Leo

We would prefer a leader who spends hours in bed worrying about the economy, writes Donal Lynch

‘On the doorsteps Micheal is jolly but never witty’

STEAM billows from a building in a quiet side street in Dublin’s Liberties and Micheal Martin stands in the midst of the fog, like a vampire bat who has assumed human form. “Was that Leo?” he quips, dispersing the fumes with his hand. “I thought we brought in a smoking ban.”

It’s a quick reminder of one of Micheal’s biggest career achievements, one that pleases him. And it warms him up nicely for his favourite part of the campaign: an afternoon canvassing.

Dublin South Central was for decades a Fianna Fail stronghold but they haven’t had a TD elected here since 2007, when the late Sean Ardagh topped the poll.

His daughter Catherine, an outgoing senator, is running this time around and she took her two newborn sons, whom she dutifully hands to Martin for photos. It takes a real baby’s face to realise that at 59, the FF leader has finally lost his.

While Fine Gael hammers home sporting metaphors and carps on about the depth of their “team”, FF’s campaign is all about Micheal.

He seems like the embodiment of a collective amnesia. When the 2008 economic crash came, he was safely tucked away in the political safe house of Foreign Affairs and, so, unlike so many of his party brethren, the disgrace of the IMF coming to town did not end his career.

In the meantime, from the ashes of the recession, he has led a modest recovery of his party. But his longevity and tenacity in opposition are a double-edged sword. They now make him look like a brand name with a yellow-pack cabinet.

People can imagine Micheal as Taoiseach but they have a harder time visualising Fianna Fail back in power. On the campaign trail the local candidates seem like an afterthought.

There is not a trace of Leo’s Thunderbird-like awkwardness as Micheal raps on unsuspecting doors; he is never lost for words and he knows how to make the right noises as people enumerate their health woes and trolley dramas at tedious length. He is excruciating in a different way to Leo, however. On the doorsteps, Micheal is jolly, but never witty. He laughs at the wrong things and recoils from actual jokes.

He calls at a house in

The Liberties and a woman beckons him inside. “I’m in here with some of the refugees you let in,” she laughs, as he and a group of journalists shuffle up her hall. “And look what we’re in the middle of filling out,” she says, holding up a social welfare form and relishing the silliness of the situation.

“Will you sign it for me?” Micheal, though generally impervious to canvassing-related embarrassment, demurs and beats a hasty retreat.

His FF minions hurry ahead of him like colourful Jehovah’s Witnesses, startling people in pyjamas and finding new victims for doorstep chats.

They have to work fast because Micheal is power- walking his way to power. He stops outside another house and asks the owner what he wants from a new Government.

“To be let die in comfort,” the man replies and Micheal lets out a practised chuckle. Pensioners say the darnedest things.

Several people congratulate him on his debate performance and he beams with pride, even if at times, during it he came across as petty and truculent. He refuses to add anything to Leo’s answer on drugs to the journalists, who trail after him, but he seems to take some issue with the way the debate was moderated by

Pat Kenny.

“It was hard to tell if it was a debate, or an interview,” he comments as he moves between the houses, although he seemed happy to turn it into an inquisition when Leo froze.

In the endless silence as we waited for clarification on his past drug use, and Micheal carped off camera, various images of Leo floated to the surface.

He is either “the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher” — as a young man in Mallow accused him of being last week — or he’s some sort of party animal, but surely we can’t have it both ways.

Or maybe we can — when the Taoiseach told Ivan

Yates that he would not be in favour of decriminalising drugs, despite having taken them himself, it came across as hypocritical.

He should understand that a young fogey can never compete with an old fogey. Perhaps the media uproar about Leo’s debate moment shows that we would prefer a Taoiseach who spends the small hours tucked up in bed, worrying about the economy.

In which case Micheal would probably be what we deserve. He has the aura of a man who has kept to his confirmation pledge.