George, where did it all go wrong? In starting with the punchline of a famous story about George Best, I mean to make no comparison between the respective experiences of the best-ever Manchester United footballer and the worst-ever Fine Gael TD for Dublin South. When the immortal line above was allegedly uttered to Best, he was surrounded by banknotes, champagne and what used to be known in more politically incorrect times as a floozy. George Lee, by contrast, appears to have had no fun at all. After the champagne ran out following his stunning by-election victory last June, he became weighed down by a witch's brew of ego, ennui, eccentricity and impatience. He sulked and skulked and finally disappeared in a trail of his own self-importance ? gone and, after this weekend I suspect, forgotten.

But it wasn't all his fault. He may not have been a political George Best, but he did for a while thrill the crowds. That was why Fine Gael wanted him on board. It believed he could be an asset, and could tap into the fury of the electorate over how our country had been demolished by the Fianna Fáil wrecking ball. He made economics comprehensible, a priceless talent in post-boom Ireland, but because politics was incomprehensible to him, he needed help from the people who had persuaded him to change career. He needed to be managed, cajoled, manipulated, bullied, encouraged and incentivised into being the fully-fledged asset they had headhunted. Everybody in leadership positions, whether in a sports team, a business, a dance group, a school or a political party knows (or should know) what needs to be done to bring the best out of their more wayward, awkward talents. But no such effort was made for Lee, it seems. And therein may lie the real question to be raised by this whole controversy – who, actually, is in charge of Fine Gael. And what do they do?

The obvious answer, I suppose, is that Enda Kenny is in charge. He is the leader, recently affirmed in that position by his front bench and by the wider parliamentary party. But in terms of strategy, policy, direction, candidate selection, who decides? We know from picking the bones of the Lee controversy that he was approached by the party's chief strategist Frank Flannery with little or no consultation with Kenny. Certainly Lee didn't meet Kenny before he signed on, although he did have one phone conversation with him. The impression given was that this big decision for Fine Gael was done with only a casual, shoulder-shrugging input from its leader.

Kenny's recent interviews on The Late Late Show and Newstalk are widely agreed – even by Kenny himself – to have been terrible. He didn't know Fine Gael policy on water charges in one; he failed to answer simple questions from Ryan Tubridy in the other. He seemed on both occasions to have been totally unprepared, to have decided that the seat-of-the-pants approach would work: "I'm Enda Kenny and I'll charm them with my likeable personality. Feck detail and policy, they'll love me. I'll be the leader they'd like to have a few pints with".

It is beyond belief that opportunities as important as headhunting Lee and a Late Late Show interview with Kenny could be left to chance, with no thought, discussion or preparation put into them. Any serious political party with designs on power would have prepared for the arrival of Lee, would have discussed whether approaching him was a good idea. Any credible, self-respecting party would have made sure that Kenny prepared intensely for a Tubridy interview. He would have been locked in a room for two hours, with somebody playing the role of interviewer, and asked every single possible question that Ryan Tubridy might have come up with. But as we saw, Kenny decided to wing it.

For all its professions of optimism about the future, Fine Gael appears not to get the enormity of what it is trying to achieve – winning an election for the first time in almost 30 years, and ridding Ireland of the Fianna Fáil virus which ruined it. It's a massive task and can only be achieved by leaving nothing, absolutely nothing, to chance. But the Fine Gael we've seen in recent weeks is a party that allows things to happen to it rather than one which makes things happen. Such a party will wilt in the white heat of an election campaign. If that happens, it won't make any difference whether Enda Kenny, Richard Bruton or Leo Varadkar is in charge.

ddoyle@tribune.ie

IN gormley's gift: watch for more green cronyism

Deirdre de Burca's decision on Friday to resign from the Senate creates a position in the upper house which will be in the gift of John Gormley. All over the country, failed Green Party election candidates must be rubbing their hands in anticipation. As the Sunday Tribune revealed last week, the Green leadership has become as adept as any corrupt dictatorship in appointing its hacks and political rejects to key positions and boards. We will await with interest to see which loser is awarded the Senate sinecure, although perhaps this time discretion will ensure that Gormley is not as blatant in his cronyism as he has hitherto been. Indeed, rumour has it that de Burca's resignation is not unconnected to her failure to get a job on Maire Geoghegan Quinn's new EU team, Gormley having decided that another promotion for Team Green would be an embarassment too far.