It was the net wat done it*

*it wasn’t really. Nor the entire media for that matter. It has been de rigeur for defenders of an Taoiseach in recent times to present the media as the enemy here. If it were not for them this would not be an issue, Ahern and his Ministers would continue to govern in their efficient inimitable fashion and focussing on an economy hitting the skids.

Its an alluring narrative, those self-selected Tribunes in the media (no pun intended) have taken it upon themselves to do this good man out of office. They will not rest unitl he leaves, irrespective of the facts.
They want a head on a plate and good-guy Bertie is to be done down for little more than some unorthodox banking in a period of enormous personal strife.

What did him in was what does every politician in here. It was the proverbial “thousand cuts“. I have been stressing this for ages but what took place was an extensive examination of a story which was given to account for suspicious monies and transactions to the accounts of a Finance  Minister (accounts he didn’t really have). The stories became stressed in the face of facts and were challenged. Ahern clarifies and the cycle repeats.

Yet it wasn’t the media that did him in, it was Ahern himself. From the moment that the stories appeared about Ahern’s unorthodox banking behaviour, he has appeared on the backfoot. At first it was not a matter for comment, then it was a matter for an intimate one to one. Once that tale became stressed Vincent Browne challenged Bertie during the election and was dispensed with, the election taken and, once again, we all “moved on”. Yet there has been no escaping the inquiry and there has been no explaining it away. Mahon has poked and prodded a story and it has not held up. Grainne Carruth was not an exception in this sense, it was a trend. It was the personification of the way in which this has developed an almost dialectical tendency.

Doing down a good man may have taken place here but it is misplaced to blame the media for that killer blow. It was only today that they all heralded Ahern’s ‘win’ in the High Court yesterday. In the end he was done in by himself. Actions in the past were not explained properly or fully. It was examined in detail by print and web. The result is that over the course of a year and a bit the story could not take the strain of that analysis and Bertie Ahern decided to go.