If he does become Taoiseach next year, it will be an achievement . . . in electoral terms . . . unsurpassed in Irish politics. After the last election, it was easy to imagine a time when Fine Gael would cease to exist altogether.

And it was difficult to care very much about that impending extinction.

Indeed, some of us would have welcomed it, because with Fine Gael out of the way, there would, in theory at least, have been a chance to fill the vacuum with a leftleaning opposition.

In any event, that turned out to be a bit of an impossible dream. Kenny has made Fine Gael credible again, which is achievement enough in itself, but if he goes all the way next year and becomes Taoiseach, many people . . .

myself included . . . who signed the party's death warrant a few years ago will have to eat humble pie.

And yet grave and great doubts remain as to whether that will happen. Some of them have to do with the nature of Kenny's personality and his approach to politics. Others are to do with the nature of the personality of the Irish electorate, its short memory and its willingness to be bought, to lie on its back and, as happened at the last election, have its belly tickled by PDs/Fianna Fail.

The witches' brew of incompetence, arrogance, glibness and laziness which marked the government's reaction to the statutory rape fiasco has been the final straw for many people, who now believe that it marks a tipping point in Irish politics, one which makes the idea of a PDs/Fianna Fail government after the next election almost inconceivable. But we've been down this road before with the coalition, watched this level of scandal, witnessed this level of public opprobrium, read all the predictions of electoral disaster. And they're still in power after it all.

Who, for example, now remembers the precise details of the Philip Sheedy affair? Drunk man Philip Sheedy knocks down woman and kills her . . . gets four years. A Supreme Court judge, Hugh O'Flaherty, helps to get the case back on to the court list, whereupon a Circuit Court judge, Cyril Kelly, who has no business hearing the case, suspends the remainder of the man's sentence. It then emerges in the Sunday Tribune that Bertie Ahern has made representations on behalf of the drunk man, who is now walking the streets again.

When that story broke in 1999, it was covered even more extensively than the statutory rape controversy of the last two weeks, and over a longer period of time. This was it, we were told. The government will never survive. If it is lucky to make it as far as the next election, it will be crushed.

The electorate will never forgive it for allowing the scandal to drag on, for not firing the judges immediately, for intervening on Philip Sheedy's behalf.

Then Charlie McCreevy tried to appoint O'Flaherty, who had resigned over the affair, to the European Investment Bank. Again all hell broke loose.

Again we were told the government couldn't survive. One person who disagreed was Mary Harney, who predicted that the fuss would all be forgotten about in a few months. She was right. Within eight weeks of the Sheedy affair, poor opinion-poll feedback prompted a heave against Fine Gael leader John Bruton, and although the Meath man survived, it was a temporary reprieve. By the time of the following election, Michael Noonan was in charge, Fine Gael was banjaxed and PDs/Fianna Fail . . .

Philip Sheedy and Hugh O'Flaherty long forgotten . . . romped back into government.

The Enda Kenny we've seen over the last few weeks has the capacity, undoubtedly, to stop something similar happening again, but there is one major obstacle in his way . . . the Enda Kenny we have become used to. This is the crazy Enda who lurks just below the surface of capable Enda. This is the Enda Kenny who appeared at the Fine Gael ardfheis, hyping the crime situation, proposing unworkable solutions and appearing to make jokes about Michael McDowell's penis. This is the Enda Kenny who seems bamboozled in the presence of big crowds (which perhaps explains why he's been doing so well in the Dail), who often looks like a Blueshirt Bunny caught in headlights and whose body language is as stilted as Peter Crouch's when he's doing his robotic goal celebration.

The make-up of the next government could well be decided by who wins this Jekyll and Hyde battle currently playing itself out within Enda Kenny. If the calmer, gentler Enda Jekyll prevails, we might have a new Taoiseach to kick around this time next year. If the madder, angrier Enda Hyde triumphs, he'll scare people away from Fine Gael and Labour and we will be stuck for the third election in a row with the crowd we all loved to hate just a week ago. Dr Jekyll is winning at the moment, but as we know from Robert Louis Stevenson's story, Mr Hyde was the one who prevailed.