World View: In a general election in 2004, a government presiding over an unprecedented economic boom suffered an unexpected defeat and lost office, turfed out because voters felt their tiger economy wasn't doing enough to help the less well-off and was fostering too great a gap between rich and poor.
Bertie Ahern had better watch out. That country was India, which he has been visiting this week.
Perhaps the Taoiseach's discussions with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh have touched on the new government's New Deal strategy, aimed at doing more to alleviate poverty and address social exclusion.
It wouldn't be the first time that the two countries have faced very similar challenges, but it is also true that Ireland and India have a long history of missed opportunities for collaboration.
Although this is the first visit by a taoiseach to India, it is not the first State visit. However, when presidents and ministers have made the journey to India in the past, the flowery garlands and the flowery words spoke more of a relationship in decline than of a vibrant partnership.
When Mary Robinson was president, she visited India in 1993 and noted that "our general images of each other have perhaps remained a little hazy and a little romanticised".
Inevitably, the Taoiseach's speeches in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai have indulged in some of that hazy romanticism. But there has also been a constructive dimension. Indeed, part of the Irish pitch to their Indian hosts has been to use the romanticised vision of good Irish-Indian links to try to sell practical economic ties.
It would certainly be heartening to revive the Irish-Indian relationship. Good relations between Ireland and India are not a fiction, although it is a dated view.
The Taoiseach's address at the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi highlighted attachments between Indian and Irish nationalist leaders. Jawaharlal Nehru himself visited Ireland several times, as did other central figures in the Indian independence movement such as Subhas Chandra Bose, nationalist leader in the 1930s, and VV Giri, president of India in the 1970s.
This was reciprocated by the interest of people like Isaac Butt and Eamon de Valera in India and Indian nationalism. Indeed, the Taoiseach's visit has included a ceremony where a Delhi street was named after the Fianna Fáil founder.
Expatriate Irish were also influential in the Indian nationalist movement, such as Annie Besant and Greta Cousins. There are also significant cultural links, epitomised by the exchanges between WB Yeats and Rabindranath Tagore. However, while nationalism created links, it failed to sustain them. On the Irish side, after independence the country moved towards an economic policy of self-sufficiency and a foreign policy of neutrality which cut it off from international contacts.
And by the time Ireland began to move away from such policies, India had embarked on its own isolationist phase. In particular, it adopted a policy of "Indianisation" of employment, which had particularly strong effects in education.
Although the Taoiseach's trip has included visits to schools and colleges established by Irish missionaries, the number of those teaching in India declined sharply after independence.
It could be argued that the two countries wanted similar things out of nationalism. However, rather than create a bond between them, there is an inherent inward-looking streak to nationalism which actually served to create distance between Ireland and India. So while it generated some initial contacts, it was unable to maintain them.
It should also be remembered that nationalism is by no means the only historical link. However, earlier relations were ones where the Irish had a reputation for racism and brutality.
Irish soldiers serving in the British army in India had a particularly fierce reputation and were implicated in a number of atrocities.
The Irish working in colonial administration fared little better, and again, even the early missionary links were mostly about helping to enforce colonial rule and cultural dominance.
In this context, links between Ireland and India were much less positive. One of the better things to have come out of the nationalist era is that it served to override the negative perceptions of Ireland and the Irish that many Indians held. Instead of remembering the Irish as being fully implicated in British colonial rule, they remembered instead the example of Irish nationalism in challenging that rule.
There have been times when Ireland was viewed very critically in India; there were times when it was seen in a much more positive light, but when there was little or no substance to the ties between the two countries.
Today the Taoiseach's visit marks an opportunity to forge both a more positive relationship and also a more substantial, concrete one. Again, though, we need to learn the lessons of the past. The earliest Irish links with India were founded on a highly exploitative relationship. While a handful of Indians benefited from colonial rule, the majority suffered under it. Today's links are based on another potentially highly exploitative relationship, that of free market capitalism, and again we need to be very careful that the benefits do not just flow to a small elite, but are widely spread for the good of the majority. And while the nationalist era helped to change the image of the Irish in India, it was also an ideological outlook which led the countries in different directions.
Once again, the two share an ideological approach - in this instance, capitalism. But this is just as capable of producing competition between them as anything more beneficial.
The lessons of the last Indian general election were clear - economic growth which marginalises large swathes of the population is unacceptable. Let's hope the ties which emerge from the Taoiseach's visit acknowledge this and instead produce links which can work to the benefit of all.
Dr Michael Holmes is a lecturer in politics at Hope University, Liverpool