THE VERDICT

BERTIE Ahern’s chance of a re-entry into politics was dismissed by Micheál Martin for some very good reasons. Facing the next general election, the last thing Fianna Fáil needs is such a prominent reminder of its discredited past or the smallest hint that nothing has changed about the way it does business.

And that’s even before you get to the question of whether Bertie, for all his X Factor appeal, would be an asset at the ballot box. Make no mistake Bertie still has mass appeal. As we saw this week with the speculation about his career, he has that ineffable magic ingredient, that je ne sais quoi that draws people like moths to a flame, commanding their trust and obeisance, at least in the early stages of what’s like a love affair.

Call it charisma, presence or supreme self-belief but words are inadequate to describe the power of some humans to dazzle their fellow men and women, to make them feel better about themselves. Against their megawatt energy, other politicians seems grey and half dead.

Whatever about his shortcomings, Donald Trump has that indefinable something in spades. He’s not erudite or specially impressive, he wears his love of causing offence like a badge yet some extraordinary personal quality has helped ordain him the most powerful man on earth.

As a leader, Bertie Ahern was the opposite to Trump, although they speak in the same language, the tongue of the ‘common man’.

Bertie’s mission was to appeal to everyone by appearing to believe in absolutely nothing at all.

HIS personal image was crafted with that wholly in mind. Separated but not divorced, coupled up but living alone, church-going but a habitual pub-goer, an anorak wearing crowd blender who took fashion risks with canary yellow trousers and sported the black smudges of penitence on Ash Wednesday.

Traditional yet modern, it was impossible to pin him down.

Yet four years since he resigned from Fianna Fáil, and now blamed for the economic collapse, his reputation has been shredded. But he still has the power to make headlines. John Bruton, Eamon Gilmore and Albert Reynolds arguably served more responsibly and less controversially but they did not electrify public opinion like he did.

It doesn’t still make him electable though, any more than Tony Blair or Bill Clinton, who share his potent charisma and were transformative politicians. Blair is politically toxic, even though he still can mesmerise an audience, to remind us of how his dynamism once infected Downing Street and reinvigorated a party that was on its last legs.

A consummate politician, Blair, like Bertie, understood the importance of image and PR in modern politics, and in that way they were ahead of their times.

Clinton had the common touch and a movie star’s sex appeal but he is such damaged goods that Hillary’s advisers kept him in the background for her campaign. Yet there was a time when the effortlessly brilliant, saxophone playing Clinton had the world at his feet, was credited with restoring the US economy, which would have happened anyway when new markets opened up after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

For all of these extraordinary leaders, star power, good timing and even better, luck, came together to catapult them to power. A mixture of sex scandals, the Iraqi war, becoming a proxy for Bush in the Middle East and economic recklessness made for three spectacular downfalls.

BUT it was something else, a fatal flaw, that broke their spell and severed the invisible bond of trust with all but their diehard supporters. In Blair and Clinton’s case their avid pursuit of wealth through their various foundations destroyed their lustre just as Ahern’s unorthodox financial affairs did for him.

The carefully crafted myths about these self-made men fell apart, exposing them as every bit as venal and self-interested as the little people. Over time, political legacies can be revised and leaders, once vilified and deplored seen in a new light.

But there is no redemption for the betrayal caused by personal greed and deceit.

It means that while these incredibly charismatic figures can never be forgotten, neither can they be forgiven.