In fact, while the Taoiseach put in a memorable and moving performance, major questions hang over the choice of the medium and the timing of the appearance.

The tribunal leak seems to have hit the party leadership amidships, which in itself illustrates a chronic reality of government communication.

To an opposition TD, every anti-government leak is a good leak, motivated only by idealism on the part of a courageous, albeit nameless, whistleblower. Once the shift is made to government, every such leak becomes a despicable, cleverly timed form of sabotage by evil-doers with hidden agendas.

Governments of every hue fail to work out what they'll do if a leak happens.

Governments of every hue waste time better used to shore up the breach by venting, publicly and privately, their (frequently justified) rage about the leak and trying to find who did the foul deed.

Although rage at tribunal leaks undoubtedly clogged the capacity to mount a coherent and effective response, that capacity was hobbled before it started by the simple duration of the borrowings involved.

What is surprising is that a media-savvy Taoiseach, having testified before the tribunal, didn't realise that the unredeemed loans needed to be redeemed, pronto. Never mind that the lads were saying "no bother." Never mind that a couple of thousand is neither here nor there to guys like Charlie Chawke. Get a bunch of banker's drafts covering loan and interest and send them to each of the donors with a little note saying: "This has left my bank account and can't go back into it. You can cash it, eat it or give it to charity, but this fulfils my debt of honour to you, and thank you for giving me a dig-out at a dire point in my life."

Long before it surfaced as an image issue, that was an option. Bertie Ahern doesn't miss obvious options. If he didn't take it, then it's fair to assume he felt that 100k flying out of his current bank accounts might, at a later date, look to the tribunal or to media like bolting the stable door when the horse is in the next parish . . . a pointless gesture done for show.

For whatever reason, the money stayed put.

And, in Clare, the morning of the leak, the Taoiseach started in affably dismissive mode, speedily progressing to ratty-as-hell detailed refusal. Over the next few days, microphonewielding media pursued Bertie Ahern and his ministers so relentlessly that cabinet members' refusal to answer questions became the story, rather than any of the events they were launching.

(In this regard, Seamus Brennan wins the prize for Gently Apologetic Refusal to say Anything. ) Something had to be done. Undoubtedly, the key consideration predisposing the Taoiseach's advisors to a TV news interview has to have been their sense . . . mirrored in texts and phone-calls to radio programmes . . . that their man was liked, that he was trusted, and that revealing the truth about the loans in a tightly controlled interview would allow him to reinforce that public opinion without the chaotic every-man-for-himself pressure of a press conference or the delivery of one interview after another.

Of course, there were going to be downsides.

Giving the interview to Six One News exclusively was going to drive TV3 nuts. Not a huge drawback. The worst TV3 could do was bitch on air. (To give them their due, they didn't. ) Giving the interview to Six One News meant that Mary Wilson's Drivetime programme would be able to broadcast it on radio at the same time as it was going out on TV. That was going to drive all of the other radio stations nuts. Again, the worst they could do was bitch. (They did. With bells on. ) The decision was made that the benefits of the RTE interview outweighed the downsides. The benefits were many. RTE were going to be so delighted to get the exclusive, they would . . . and did . . . do it in Bertie's HQ. Quite apart from the comfort of playing on your own pitch, this meant he didn't have to run the gauntlet of cameras at the entrance to RTE or cope with the distractions of RTE VIPs lined up to welcome him. He could prepare in peace.

The choice of a news interview rather than appearing on a current affairs programme would allow him to deliver what would essentially be a monologue interspersed with a few polite questions, as opposed to a staccato barracking.

The precedent, in PR race memory, is Nixon's 'Checkers' speech, where he laid out the facts of the donations made to him, illustrated the frugality of his personal life by stating that not only did his wife not own a fur coat, but wore "a good Republican cloth coat, " and drew the sympathy of the public by confirming that he had, indeed, received one gift:

a black-and-white cocker spaniel which his two daughters adored and which he was going to keep.

Going over the heads of the "ethics Nazis" (as one texter to a radio programme described media this week) had a lot going for it. Bertie could be Bertie: nice man coming clean about a bad time in his life and the long-standing friends who bailed him out. He was calm, he was emotional, he answered the questions. He even offered more than was on the agenda: the 'Manchester money'. It was a great performance.

The problem is that word: performance. We watch TV quite differently, these days, than we did as recently as 10 years ago. The minute a politician in trouble goes on TV, the amateur body-language readers come out in force, although Bertie gave them precious little to work with. More significantly, however, what happens onscreen is viewed, not as reality, but as a confection. Add that to the fury of print media at being left out of the exclusive, and the inevitable end result was the headline in The Star: "BERTIE'S CRYING GAME" with the sub-head "Tearful Ahern plays a blinder in £39,000 TV quiz show."

Secondary media coverage, in barbed compliments to the Taoiseach on how well he had done, nonetheless sent a message to the public that this had been a stage-managed performance. Many of the radio stations, enraged by exclusion, ran textin opinion polls, announcing figures of negative response to the broadcast ranging from 60% against to more than 70%. These text polls gather together the views of opinionated listeners to that particular programme (always a limited demographic) and have no statistical validity, but that didn't stop the radio programmes involved presenting the 'findings' as a negative verdict on the Taoiseach's big interview.

There's a real possibility that this polling (like American push-polling) served to subtly alter public reaction. A viewer who, watching the Bryan Dobson interview, saw the Taoiseach as a decent human being, may be persuaded, by follow-up coverage, to feel a bit of a fool, manipulated by sophisticated media preparation and other hidden devices. Nobody wants to feel a fool, and taking a cynical attitude to the interview is the quick way to being perceived (and perceiving oneself) as immune to media tricks. So phrases such as 'Paddy the Plasterer' and 'Debt of Honour' took on a life of their own as probable PR plants. (The sleeper phrase was 'The Manchester Money', which took on a life of its own in the following days. ) It's arguable that the civilised tone of the interview didn't help. A courteously patient interview . . . as Bryan Dobson's was . . . is in many ways more difficult to deal with than an overtly hostile one. It invites full and frank disclosure and the interviewee, attempting to respond appropriately, may end up leaving trailing wires and verbal fumbles (like the comment about appointing friends to state boards) which are then portrayed as having more significance than was intended.

Handling a docile interviewer is like a rugby team facing weak opposition. Often the failure of the opposition to give resistance stops the team from pulling out their best performance. It is the stresstesting, the opposition, the forensic follow-up that allows the spectator see that the team can really deliver. Friendlies never prove the strength of a team.

The TV interview was a clever device. A clever device with explosives attached. Yes, the Taoiseach got direct, one-to-one contact with his public, and with more of them than would normally watch the early evening news. However, the cleverality of the approach probably quadrupled the coverage that would have been generated by a printed statement, contributed to the negative flavour of that coverage and may have lengthened the life of the story.

That said, in the immediate aftermath of the TV broadcast, the statue stood. High-minded pursuit by the opposition hasn't worked before, in relation to Bertie Ahern, and was rendered largely pointless once Michael McDowell rowed in behind the Taoiseach.

Once McDowell wobbled, everything changed.

Changed utterly.