Strip away the excitement of the first week, or last weekend's mass suicide by the Progressive Ditherers, and what you are left with is a campaign so flat and uninspired that it makes you wish you lived in France. Twenty million people there recently watched a lengthy TV debate between two presidential candidates who brought entirely different philosophies of life, entirely separate visions of France's future, to the table. That's almost onethird of the country's population.

Ireland's politicans love to patronise us and tell us what a sophisticated electorate we are, but if 1.4 million Irish people watch next Thursday's debate between Enda Kenny and Bertie Ahern, then I'm Segolene Royal. The figure will be much smaller, and not just because the debate will be on at the same time as the first episode of the final series of The Sopranos on RTE2. It's because the election campaign so far has been dominated by an air of fear and cynicism and the terrible suspicion that there is nothing to choose between the alternative coalitions.

Voting therefore comes down to a choice between the old faces of PD/Fianna Fail (less likely since the Ditherers imploded seven days ago) and what is rapidly becoming the portentous-sounding (if entirely meaningless in the circumstances) Alliance for Change.

The fear is everywhere and, with the possible exception of Trevor Sargent, who is basking in the freedom afforded to niche-party bosses to just be themselves, is affecting all the leaders. You can see it in Enda Kenny's campaign, during which he has diligently avoided saying anything of substance that might come back to haunt him. You can see it in the Taoiseach's refusal to offer any vision of where he might take the country over the next five years.

("Same again, lads" is not a political philosophy). It was obvious last weekend in Michael McDowell's inability to follow through on his desire to assert the Progressive Ditherers' independence from Fianna Fail. It's obvious in the Trinny and Susannah-like makeover of Sinn Fein from balaclava-wearing bovver boys into beret-wearers full of bonhomie, and is especially clear in Pat Rabbitte's inability to properly articulate the thinking behind the punctuationally challenged 'But, Are You Happy?'

slogan. He is so wedded now to the fortunes of Enda Kenny that he cannot be seen to outthink him, outshine him or outperform him, all of which he would be capable of doing if Labour and Fine Gael were running separate campaigns.

There is more to fear than fear itself, however. The cynicism abroad is doing even more damage to the possibility that we could have the kind of vigorous, intelligent campaigns we regularly see in the likes of France, the United States and the United Kingdom. This cynicism is a twoway thing. For years, the electorate, often with good reason, has been cynical about politicians.

What we are seeing in this election, perhaps for the first time, are politicians who are deeply cynical about the electorate, and who are making no attempt to hide their disdain.

We got the first sign of that during the party conference season in February and March which turned into an orgy of promises, as though the political parties could not conceive of the idea of an electorate which would vote without some very expensive inducements. Since then, the cynicism has transferred into a campaign of telling people what they want to hear without necessarily explaining to them how all of the promises and aspirations might be achieved. There has been a resulting and shocking lack of thought, debate or ideas present in the campaign. All of the main parties have rushed towards the centre, all are essentially putting forward the same commitments and promises and, as the days go by, all are starting to resemble each other. Occasionally, such as in the debate over hospital co-location, a topic will turn up to remind you that some of the parties involved in the election once had identifiable ideologies that differentiated them.

But now they are united by a combination of cynicism about the voters and fear of offending them.

If you disagree with that thesis, then I ask you: what has been the Big Idea in this campaign? What political party has come up with an ingenious or intelligent policy that has forced the others to respond?

Who is the politician who speaks to the national mood, who senses the kind of country we want to become as the boom years come to a close?

Who is the person with the vision to articulate this?

The answer is that there is no big idea and no ingenious policy; only ideas designed out of opportunism.

Stamp duty, for example, has been one of the main issues debated in the campaign but, as successive opinion polls have shown, it is not important to the vast majority of people. It is an issue only because one national newspaper, in the dying days of its credibility, decided that it was so, and because terrified politicians then decided that they would have to respond. Such fear and such cynicism. Plus ca changef as they say in France.