CHARLIE HAUGHEY has prided himself on an ability to understand Irish people to get things done to cut to the heart of things.
In the process, he became a figure of great controversy, acquired significant wealth, led the largest party in the State and held the position of Taoiseach for more than eight years.
Next week, after five years of uneasy retirement, Mr Haughey will be back in the glare of publicity when the McCracken tribunal begins its investigation into a series of political payments made by Ben Duane between 1986 and 1996.
And, if past performances are any yardstick, he may escape lightly.
But the episode will be deeply disturbing to Fianna Fail and to the political process. It will resurrect the circumstances leading up to Mr Haughey's removal as Taoiseach remind people of the ultimatum delivered by the Progressive Democrats when Sean Doherty declared that Mr Haughey had been kept fully informed of improper telephone tapping arrangements; and reopen sharp divisions within Fianna Fail itself about their former leader.
Eight months after being ousted by Mr Reynolds as party leader in 1992, Mr Haughey paid tribute to the unswerving support he had received down the years from ordinary party members. They were, he said "a great bulwark of support .... an unassailable fortress against which denigration and animosity beat in vain."
There was certainly plenty of denigration. It reached back to the 1960s when Mr Haughey came to national prominence and began to emerge as a man of wealth.
A scholarship boy from a relatively poor background, he qualified as an accountant and won a Dail seat in 1957. He made rapid political progress, married a daughter of Sean Lemass and was popular. The late James Dillon, then leader of Fine Gael, complimented him as a junior minister for justice in 1961 for his "extraordinary erudition" and "exceptional and outstanding ability".
But five years later the same Mr Dillon declared: "He stinks, politically, of course". At about the same time, the late George Colley was talking darkly of "low standards in high places".
It was the time of mohair suits in Fianna Fail, of rapid economic development, of speculators and rezoning and of Dublin office blocks built for occupation at high rents by State agencies.
In 1969 Mr Haughey sold his family farm at Grangemore, Raheny, for housing development to a company owned by the Gallagher Group.
He received £204,000 for a property he had acquired a few years earlier for £50,000. And he benefited from a capital gains tax provision that he himself had introduced in the previous Budget.
Removed from Cabinet by Jack Lynch in 1970 over the case arising from a attempt to import arms for use in Northern Ireland, he was reported to have asked Des O'Malley before the arms trial began if Peter Berry, then Secretary of the Department of Justice, "could be induced", "directed" or "intimidated" into not giving evidence or changing his evidence.
The answer was in the negative. Mr Haughey was acquitted. He spent the following years touring the country, cultivating members of the Fianna Fail organisation and, when the party swept back into government in 1977, he was reappointed to Cabinet.
By that time he had bought the Blasket island of Innishvickillaun, built a house there and purchased a substantial trawler. At no stage during those years did he attempt to explain the source of his wealth despite regular allegations of impropriety by opposition politicians.
His election as leader of Fianna Fail in 1979 convulsed the party and later brought Mr Haughey into conflict with Des Hanafin, the party's corporate fund raiser. At one stage, letters soliciting funds for the party from the business community were being issued from two sources.
The appointment of Sedan Doherty as Minister for Justice in 1982 brought the telephone tapping scandal. Mr Doherty was banished to the back benches when the matter was revealed by the coalition government in 1983. Mr Haughey denied any knowledge of or involvement in the matter.
By 1987 Mr Haughey was leading a minority Fianna Fail government. He presided over a courageous restructuring of the government's finances and the control of the national debt.
As the economy took off in 1989, Fianna Fail entered government with the Progressive Democrats and the controversies multiplied. The privatisation of Greencore and the appointment of NCB as advisers became a source of public criticism, as did the awarding of contracts within the Financial Service Centre.
Circumstances surrounding the purchase and resale of the Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien site in Dublin brought political controversy and the resignation of members of the board of Telecom Eireann.
Des O'Malley, in Government with Mr Haughey, talked about "a golden circle" involving businessmen and politicians. And six Fianna Fail backbenchers issued a statement expressing their dismay at the damage being done to the party by the allegations. At about the same time, Mr Hang hey took personal control of the "passports for sale" scheme in Government.
By 1991 Labour and the Workers' Party were demanding a sworn inquiry into the beef industry, and the Progressive Democrats threatened to pull out of government, because of allegations of fraud and of political chicanery. They got their tribunal.
Later that year an attempt by Albert Reynolds to topple Mr Haughey as party leader failed.
But when Sean Doherty declared, tan February 1992, that Mr Haughey had been kept fully aware of the 1982 tapping of journalists' hones, he at first denied it and then, when the Progressive Democrats - threatened to walk out of Government, resigned.
Mr Haughey left politics with his dignity, if not his reputation, intact. And he still counts support from that "unassailable fortress".