All went merry as a marriage bell until the poster was revealed, at which point the assembled media did an "Aaah". Now, "Aaahs" come in different types. There's the Gaybo "Aaah" offered in sentimental tribute to toddlers, baby lambs and day-old chicks. There's the indrawnbreath "Aaah" of those witnessing an election poster falling on a passer-by. And there's the anti-climactic "Aaah", emitted by a hack who knows what's in front of them is low on the sexy-story scale and will require a lot of work to move it up that scale.

The PD poster was low on the sexy-story scale, although it did demonstrate that posters should never be regarded as static statements, but, throughout a campaign, should be added to or subtracted from, because if the candidate or party doesn't do some adding or subtracting, the opposition or the local graffitist will.

The hacks were seriously relieved when the Greens' John Gormley barrelled his way through the crowd to barrack the minister for justice, waving a leaflet and claiming it was full of PD lies about the Greens.

McDowell told Gormley to calm down, which is the conversational equivalent of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre: it tends to make everybody more, rather than less, excited. He continued with his speech, ironically asking how those present would feel, faced with a cabinet which included Greens.

Only grand, Gormley hollered, bypassing the irony and grabbing the opportunity to suggest that a Green would be a delightful addition to any cabinet table.

Things went downhill from that point, to the delight of assembled media, who became focused on flying spit. Fine Gael's Lucinda Creighton, arriving with her own ladder and anti-PD poster, didn't get into the flying spit business, concentrating on establishing her own relationship with her own lamppost.

The fracas had dual consequences. The first was that the PD leader managed to put two members of his competition at the top of all the news lists for that evening.

The second was that . . . at least in theory . . . he went into that night's foursided leaders' debate on the back foot. The performance he gave in that debate might give Gerry Adams some worry about how he'll cope with McDowell when the latter is on the front foot, because McDowell made bits of the Sinn Fein leader.

That leaders' debate was the one which re-established a great media truth: What you see depends on where you stand. Those standing with the Alliance for Change thought Pat Rabbitte won it by a mile. Those standing with the PDs were equally convinced that their own man was streets ahead of everybody else, despite effectively being in a minority of one.

Of course, at this point, there's so many leaders' debates, it's like the promised proliferation of gardai.

There's going to be one for everybody in the audience, whether we want them or not.

Cooper and Hobbs, who reasonably assumed they'd get Gerry Adams, instead, for their Monday programme, got Sinn Fein's Caoimhghin O Caolain, who has the most stilted prose this side of the 18th century and the most determined smile in captivity. He smiled at Cooper, who didn't smile back. He smiled at Hobbs, who half-smiled while sticking a series of shivs in him. The programme, which has found its feet, is greatly hampered . . . as are so many media outlets . . . by how closely related to each other are the policies of most of the parties.

Rather than selling an ideologically-different policy, most of the parties are effectively saying, "We'll do it better than that other lot."

Fianna Fail and the PDs' claim is, "We'll do it better than the other lot because we've done a lot of stuff and mostly done it right." This reliance on gratitude (despite the fact that the electorate always has a gratitude-deficiency) has led to an oversized faith in doing what they did the last time. Fianna Fail has run press conferences in Treasury Holdings Buildings as if re-using that building was guaranteed to evoke happy campaign memories. It wasn't and didn't.

In addition, the press conferences were professionally presented by ministers who looked as if they'd recently been smacked over the head with a lightly-padded 2X4.

They had a stunned solemnity, rather than an enthused delight, and by the third time you saw them, sandwiched between head-level versions and knee-level versions of the campaign slogan, you began to figure it was depressing them as much as it was depressing the viewers. (They did come up several notches on Friday, however. ) None of which takes away from the marvellous hyperactivity of Fianna Fail's Chosen Few. Made up of Brian Cowen, Dermot Ahern, Micheal Martin and Noel Dempsey, the Chosen Few have been rolled out across all programmes and all issues. To a man, they have played a blinder.

But, of course, the reason behind rolling them out gave Fine Gael (remarkably creative, particularly in visual terms, throughout this election) the chance to run its cardboard dummies of two ministers who have been relentlessly underexposed by the party: Dick Roche and Martin Cullen, carrying notices which read FREE THE FF TWO.

Dick Roche was freed onto media at lunchtime on the day of the RTE Big Debate. He laughed lightly and let on to know nothing about focusgroup research, prompting PJ Mara to keep him off the airwaves, before silkily suggesting that Enda Kenny was very pleasant. He made it sound like an indictment. As if Kenny had nothing going for him but his niceness. No brains, no achievements.

But very nice. Dick Roche could confirm he was really, really nice.

Thus primed, viewers sat down later that day to watch Bertie and Enda debate.

The Taoiseach obviously hadn't heard Dick Roche, because he didn't seem to find Enda Kenny nice at all. Particularly when, as the Taoiseach was launching a point by saying "To be honest with you", Kenny heckled by announcing that Fine Gael is always honest.

The Big Debate showed two clever, competent, combative men in action. Both of them seemed to have left their "nice" at the studio door.