Like all women, Miriam Lord of the Irish Times has that eagle eye for detail that arises from an interest in intimacy. So Miriam has spotted something most of the political pundits have missed. Brian Cowen is doing well in the Dail.

Last Thursday, under the title 'Chrysalis Cowen awakens to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee', she told us: "A few skirmishes, but the Taoiseach is proving more difficult to bait these days. It's as if he's silently counting to three before engaging. He's letting the Opposition heckle, but keeping his cool."

Miriam is right. And since the Opposition don't like a bear they can't bait, they tried to provoke Cowen after the IMF report by risibly charging him with failure to foreclose on the Celtic Tiger. Risible. It asks us to believe the Rainbow would have brought in a property tax and cut the pay of civil servants. Some ask.

The truth is that both Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan are getting to grips with the current crisis, both in the Dail and downtown.

Consequently, both are busy men. But they would have been both cheered and chastened if they turned up last Tuesday at the inaugural Lemass International Forum, ably chaired by John Bowman.

Like I suspect most of those present, I turned up more from respect for Sean Lemass than from any real expectation that I would be enlightened either about the causes or the cure of our current crisis. But I left at lunchtime with a much lighter heart. And I was not alone.

Thanks to TK Whitaker. All societies shrivel without wise men and women. Luckily, Whitaker has not grown old as we have grown old. Still hale at 93, the genius who guided us from protectionism to free trade is both wise and street-wise.

Without being a backstreet driver, Whitaker gave the two Brians a simple two-sentence guide to doing good: "During the present difficult phase it is a social obligation to explore every alternative to loss of employment. Shorter earning hours or acceptance of a drop in pay may be much more tolerable than dependence on the dole."

Likewise, the two Brians could have learned a lot about slaughtering sacred cows from Prof Gary Murphy's paper, based on his forthcoming book, In Search of the Promised Land: Politics in Post-War Ireland which showed how Sean Lemass went about that bloody task.

Murphy pointed out that Sean Lemass introduced protectionism in the Thirties -- and the same Sean Lemass took these measures off the statute books in the Sixties. Like me, Prof Murphy seems to feel Lemass was right both times.

Lemass's political life proved the only political rule for which I have any respect: that freedom is the recognition of the necessity to change as circumstances change.

Which is why the current blame game -- designed to split Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan -- is a distraction based on a distortion of the past.

For example, Prof Murphy pointed out that in 2006 (when Brian Cowen was Finance Minister) the Index of Economic Freedom found that Ireland "has one of the world's most pro-business environments, especially for foreign businesses and investments, and Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose Fianna Fail party governs in coalition with the Progressive Democrats, has maintained this impressive heritage. "

Accordingly, Brian Cowen is right to refuse to apologise for his actions as Finance Minister. Cowen did what any other finance minister would have done -- including Richard Bruton: he tried to prolong and spread the profits of the boom as widely as possible.

But that does not absolve Brian Cowen from the main Lemassian duty laid out in Prof Murphy's paper: to lead by example, and by slaughtering sacred cows -- particularly the cows closest to your own heart.

And in my book, the three sacred cows currently calling out for the stun gun are the lawyer class, the public servant class and the Luddite class.

Let's start with the lawyers. Last Tuesday, hot from the Lemass conference, I headed for the Seanad where I took the Taoiseach to task for his soft line on the levy-averse judges. But I was really criticising the culture of lawyerism in Fianna Fail -- a party which offered me only a choice between two lawyers at the recent local elections.

Last week, the politician/lawyers in all parties seemed to put the legal professions before the public, beginning with Brian Cowen and finishing with Senator Bacik -- who could not bring herself to say a hard word about the judges in the Senate.

Let me give the Taoiseach some tough love. Fianna Fail did not rise on wings of legal eagles. And the party was prudent in not putting any trust in lawyers' loyalty: their wings are made of wax and liable to melt in the heat.

Furthermore, almost every major crisis I can remember in recent years began with the Government "acting on the advice of the Attorney General".

To make matters worse, according to Donal Barrington SC, the advice given on judges and the pension levy was open to question.

Let me now turn briefly to the second sacred cow: the public sector. The Eurostat survey says our public servants earn €120 for every €100 earned in the private sector and only pay a tiny percentage towards their pensions. Meanwhile, one million private sector workers have no pensions.

This is a scandal and it must stop.

Finally, the two Brians should pack in their softly-softly approach to our Left Luddites, the fake socialists who form the spine of the anti-Lisbon and the Shell to Sea campaigns, and flatly point out that the campaigns are driven by reactionary republican socialist forces and not by well meaning do-gooders.

Last week, Pat Cox on Morning Ireland and Brigid Laffan on Newstalk's Breakfast Show got stuck into the Lisbon Luddites by naming Sinn Fein and their leftie allies and stayed in hot pursuit and took no prisoners. Among the casualties was Tom McGurk of 4FM who seemed annoyed at Seamus Heaney supporting a Yes vote.

Cox tormented McGurk until the latter got so angry he wondered aloud why Seamus Heaney would take a pro-Lisbon stand having "spent his life sitting on the fence".

Big mistake by McGurk -- but Cox helped McGurk make that mistake.

Cox and Laffan are proving the old truth that good political leaders do not chase a constituency -- they "constitute" a new one, not by prissy debates, but by identifying the issues as morally and ideologically important, and calling on people to take sides.

If alerted to the ideological issues, most Irish people will instinctively desert the Luddite and anti-Lisbon side.

Alerting them means taking the hard line, and naming out the political loonies on the Luddite Left -- as Prof Laffan did last week.

The two Brians should face the fact that the culture of lawyerism was also connected to the soft line taken by the Government in the early stages of both the Shannon stopover protests and the Shell to Sea campaign. Apart from making the militants more brazen, the soft line has so far cost the taxpayer €22m in security measures.

Bottom line: the two Brians are doing well. They would do better if they slaughtered these three sacred cows. Let Lemass lead on.

Eoghan Harris

- Eoghan Harris