Once upon a long time ago, in a gloomy pub toilet, I had the pleasure of having a pee alongside the late and legendary Oliver J Flanagan TD. It occasioned a useful lesson for a young reporter -- my only regret being that I couldn't take contemporaneous notes, my hands being otherwise engaged.

In the jacks that afternoon, Oliver continued a conversation with a flunky who stood in the background. It was in the middle of an election campaign and the great TD had identified an area of the constituency that had faltered in its loyalty to him. He rattled off numbers -- how many people lived in the enclave, how many voted and who they traditionally voted for. And he identified specific election boxes where his votes came up short last time. Those people had to be worked on.

Until then, I hadn't realised the skill, talent and unwavering dedication that went into being a successful TD. It involves long hours gathering and interpreting electoral information, and long years massaging constituents. Subsequently, other TDs revealed the true value of such practices as repeat canvasses and detailed tallies.

You might dismiss the likes of Oliver as a small-timer of no significance. You'd be wrong. A TD for four decades, Oliver was in the first ranks of the Dail. For 11 years he represented us in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and he became a minister in the Fine Gael/Labour "government of all the talents". (The joke of the time was that when asked to be minister for defence, Oliver solemnly promised he would indeed look after "de fence" to the best of his ability.)

Bertie Ahern, Enda Kenny and Brian Cowen are Oliver Flanagan without the anti-Semitism. In a few words, nods and handshakes, Bertie can empathise with a whole roomful of voters. The empathy may be entirely bogus, but it's an amazing talent -- and one that voters reward.

We have a parliament dominated by dedicated and skilled vote hunters. Unfortunately, other necessary skills are lacking. With all the information they had, neither Ahern nor Cowen realised the depth of the pit of unsustainable debt they helped dig, along with their builder friends. They simply believed it to be true when estate agents said our land and property was now worth multiples of what it used to. And they thought it appropriate that builders and bankers should use that "truth" to "leverage" their way into such debt as to destabilise the banking system.

As Anglo Irish Bank rushed towards collapse, poor, pitiable Brian Lenihan struggled to avoid a blunder, and walked the rest of us into a catastrophe.

He had to give a blanket guarantee -- of a potential €440bn -- to save Anglo and thereby protect the banks. Because he'd been told Anglo was a systemic part of Irish banking. The latest steps expose us to risks of tens of billions we don't have.

Economists such as Morgan Kelly and Alan Ahearne tell us Anglo never was the kind of bank that had to be defended at all costs. I'm not qualified to take part in such arguments, but I can open a phone book. You'll find a whole page of numbers for AIB and another for Bank of Ireland. Even NIB has half a page -- showing branches spread throughout the community, systemically embedded lines of commerce and credit.

Anglo has three numbers, head office, personal savings and private banking for the elite. Anglo was little more than a specialist gambling house. Albeit a gambling house with an amiable chap in charge, a gambling house patronised by rich builders with links to Fianna Fail. Whether such links influenced policy, even subliminally, we can't know.

If politicians lack detailed knowledge of matters such as banking, they can substitute an over-all vision of society, of where it is and the direction in which they want it to go. Such vision is almost entirely absent from Irish politics. It's all short-term stuff, career curves and constituency profiles -- latterly oiled with promises of tax breaks. No vision, no political programme beyond the catch-all and disposable "policy document" produced to wave around at election time.

Brian Lenihan, and Brian Cowen are prisoners of their political history. Their skills are in vote-hunting. Both are entirely honourable in personal financial matters. However, the party in which they rose to power is steeped in a doubtful environment -- in which the best interests of builders and developers are identified with the best interests of the nation.

The media likes to label people -- and Cowen has been labelled a sensitive, intelligent soul. But he was a minister in six departments, and -- in the timeless phrase -- he rose without trace. His performance in recent months is not a dramatic fall from top form. This appears to be his top form.

Lenihan told the BBC the economy is "thriving" -- perhaps he thinks this will impress foreign investors. But anyone seriously considering investment will already have done their research. They look at him on TV and see a minister for finance who's out of his depth. And pass on.

This was Lenihan's John McCain moment -- "the fundamentals of the American economy are sound", McCain repeatedly chirped, and voters who knew better turned away in embarrassment.

The line between the likes of Oliver J Flanagan and Brian Cowen is obvious -- but how do we account for the likes of John Gormley, whose party sustains this current government?

Many of us see the likes of Gormley as somewhat different to the usual run of TD -- motivated by issues. However, when asked by Vincent Browne, on TV3 Nightly News, why he made a deal with Fianna Fail, Gormley said that the prospect of five more years in opposition was "soul destroying".

He seemed consumed by the need to be relevant at whatever price -- the same bug that bit old Oliver.

So, Mr Gormley saved his soul. And if that meant he had to support the mugging of pensioners, so be it. And slashing public transport -- that too. And continuing the inefficient, dangerous free-market experiment with the health system -- Mr Gormley could stomach that.

He could allow increases in primary and secondary class sizes. When Batt O'Keeffe brings in his third-level education tax, in the form of fees, Mr Gormley will salute.

On the bright side, he can tell himself that, thanks to his efforts, faltering hospitals and schools will not be illuminated by the wasteful type of lightbulb.

Politically, we've long been careless in our choices, easily swayed by local loyalties, habit and a weakness for charming non-entities.

And many of these people really are entertaining and truly likeable. But gormless. In the years to come, we may pay a price of Icelandic proportions.

John Gormley's understanding of why there are rumblings of dissatisfaction with the Greens is as follows: "People are not aware of all the achievements of the Green Party in government. That is a worry because we have to get that message across."

He thinks we're disappointed and angry because we don't know what he's doing. No, John, your problem is that we know all too well.