Last Friday, with just one clearly delivered broadcast, the Taoiseach disproved a famous dictum of Dr Johnson's - that once the media has started using you badly it will go on doing so, although Johnson used the word 'world' instead of the word 'media'.
ecause commentators mostly, if begrudgingly, accepted the Taoiseach had delivered a tough message with the clarity which was needed without having to resort to Seamus Heaney.
But it was the first break he got. Soon after the general election, Martin got up the patrician noses of the posher nationalists who now dominate our media when the shock and awe of the Sinn Féin vote left him unshocked and unawed.
Furthermore, Martin's modest presentation style did not go down well with a media mourning the loss of Leo Varadkar reading reassuring speeches from an autocue while the sun shone brightly and the pandemic payments poured in.
But the tone of David McCullagh's interview with the Taoiseach last Tuesday on Six One, after the launch of the Living with Covid-19 plan, left a very sour taste.
Going into the interview, it behoved McCullagh to be seen to be scrupulously fair given Martin reviewed McCullagh's De Valera: Rise (1882-1932) for the 2017 Irish Times launch and gave it a critical grilling.
Himself a historian by training, Martin had three cogent criticisms but only the first is of relevance here.
"First is the sense of De Valera being subjected to a level of microscopic examination applied to no other figure - placing him at an obvious disadvantage. Every error, inconsistency, reversal and obfuscation is documented with others being largely seen as innocent acolytes or pure-hearted opponents."
That pretty much summed up McCullagh's approach to interviewing the Taoiseach on the Covid plan on Six One. Instead of asking the questions the public wanted answered, he adopted an abrasive style.
McCullagh's forte is polemical interviewing on Prime Time rather than the calm search for hard facts required by his new slot, co-anchoring Six One News with Caitríona Perry.
So far he has seemed subdued, as if trying to figure out how to complement Perry's calm probings. But last Tuesday he seemed determined to make an impact when interviewing the Taoiseach outside Government Buildings.
If so, he made the wrong kind of impact. Treating the Taoiseach as if he were a politician caught at Golfgate rather than the leader of the country with a crucial public health message to impart, McCullagh's body language looked hammily sceptical.
You don't have to take my word on that. McCullagh's histrionics are on the RTÉ Player and were rightly perceived by many in the public as over the top.
McCullagh began by contemptuously brandishing a copy of the 60-page plan and proceeded with one of the most supercilious interviews in the history of RTÉ, the cutaways revealing as much as the tone of voice.
At one point, on the issue of home visits, McCullagh interrupted the Taoiseach: "I don't think that's correct."
Martin assured him it was correct. McCullagh flipped over pages of the document while the Taoiseach awaited the verdict.
After a quick glance, McCullagh realised he had blundered on the details. His next move should have been to apologise and adjust his question. Instead he muttered "oh, OK" without having the grace to concede he had been wrong.
From a news point of view, the interview was designed to clarify the plan, but due to McCullagh's posturing, the public were left even more in the dark.
It was an interview that needlessly degraded the head of government and diminished the status of the national broadcaster.
Jon Williams, head of news, should sit in a room and watch that interview cold and ask himself if that kind of tabloid-style theatrics is what RTÉ news is about.
Later, on Prime Time, Leo Varadkar benefited from the professionalism of McCullagh's former co-presenter Miriam O'Callaghan.
There was no attitude on her part, no hustling, just appropriate questions to Varadkar and time afforded to answer them.
In fairness, McCullagh's dismissive attitude to the Taoiseach mirrors the attitude of some members of Martin's own party.
Criticism of him reached its crescendo two weeks ago, according to a series of scorching reports by Daniel McConnell in the Irish Examiner. According to Martin loyalists, however, the only direct attackers were John McGuinness and Marc MacSharry, who were blamed for briefing the Examiner.
But last week these reports resulted in a hard pushback by younger TDs and senators who belatedly began to condemn those leaking negativity and called for party unity.
But this is only likely to be a respite from the canker eating the heart out of Fianna Fáil - the dangerous delusion that the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement should be brushed aside by a premature search for a united Ireland.
Nobody suffers from the canker - which when boiled down is revealed to be merely a call for louder republican rhetoric - more than Éamon Ó Cuív.
Ó Cuív's response to criticism of his dialogues with IRA dissidents - risibly reminiscent of Gladstone's pious attempts to talk prostitutes into giving up the game - shows he believes he has some kind of divine counselling mission to convert violent republicans, deriving from his famous grandfather, Éamon de Valera.
"What I was supporting was the work of a group of dissidents, a group I had worked with for two years, in their attempts to move away from violence."
Ó Cuív forgets two things. First, although De Valera was actually MP for South Down as well as TD for East Clare from 1933 to 1938, he never set foot in the North again after he passed Bunreacht na hÉireann. Like the rest of us in the Republic he was just not that into Northern Ireland.
Second, De Valera never tried to convert the IRA but treated them as mortal enemies of the Republic and fought them to the death.
The potential leader most likely to fit the bill of Ó Cuív's brand of verbal republicanism is Jim O'Callaghan, whose behaviour in recent weeks recalled Alexander Pope's lines: "Willing to wound/ but yet afraid to strike."
But O'Callaghan sniffed the breeze from the Fianna Fáil young guns last week and sensibly said he was putting his bid on the back burner for now. If he is wise he will stay in the relatively rational world of the Law Library.
Because Fianna Fáil is caught in a historical reality that cannot be removed by rhetoric no matter how articulate the advocate.
Ironically, the current frisson in Fianna Fáil for more green rhetoric is a product of the success of the Good Friday Agreement.
Bertie Ahern built the GFA to last. And its interlocking parts, including constitutional change, power-sharing and a strong east-west axis, offer the best chance of a lasting peace.
Dr Johnson mocked those who could not pass a sleeping dog in the street without kicking it to see if it were really asleep and then affected surprise when it jumped up barking.
We do not want the Northern dog to be kicked by some ambitious fool in Fianna Fáil so it jumps up barking - and possibly biting. Luckily, Micheál Martin is still leader.
