Whatever about his exit, the Taoiseach has the Belfast Agreement to his lasting credit, writes David Adams.
IT IS LITTLE wonder that most political careers seem to end in failure. Politicians are virtually incapable of judging when the time is right for them to call it a day.
It not being in their nature to relinquish position and power easily, they usually hang on, regardless of circumstance, until forcibly removed by the electorate and/or their own party.
The public perception of them, therefore, is that of final rejection and failure.
Bertie Ahern was no different from other politicians in that he clung to office after his position had become untenable.
I wrote here last year that he had not been found guilty of any wrongdoing, and so was entitled to the same presumption of innocence as any other citizen.
I hold fast to that position. Yet, at the same time, I was keenly aware of how politics works. Politicians flourish or fall not solely on the basis of proven fact and solid evidence, but often on the whim and fancy of the far less evidentially strenuous court of public opinion.
Weight of allegation alone is enough to destroy the career of any elected representative.
Leaders of state, in particular, must retain the trust of those who elect them or they are finished.
From a purely political perspective, as the questions about his finances mounted and his explanations became more convoluted, the public perception of Ahern as a bit dodgy became more important than the absence of any conclusive proof. For quite a while, it had been a question of when, not if, he would have to resign.
Still, it is debatable whether the electorate had indeed lost faith in him.
It is more likely the case that Fianna Fáil had become jittery and feared the public was about to follow suit. Despite claims that it was his decision alone, it is almost certain that Ahern only finally decided to call it a day after receiving "advice" from senior colleagues.
Even a lowly councillor seldom resigns without some prior "consultation" with other party members, much less a taoiseach.
The same unwillingness to relinquish power and position that makes politicians so bad at judging when they themselves should vacate office, gives them an unerring instinct for when a colleague should do so.
As soon as fears began to rise that Ahern's troubles were threatening the standing of his party, and therefore the future career prospects of those around him, he had to go.
By this token, his resignation should certainly not be taken as an indication of guilt. Whatever the Mahon tribunal eventually concludes - presuming that it ever does finally reach a conclusion - it is by no means certain that Ahern's career will be deemed to have ended in failure.
There is certainly no sense of public animosity towards him. In fact, as far as I can judge, he seems throughout his Mahon travails to have been generally regarded with a lot of affection, and now, added to that, there is a good deal of sympathy for him as well.
Far more importantly, he has the Belfast Agreement to his lasting credit.
When one considers it in its totality, the agreement was the single most positive political development on this island and between the islands of Ireland and Britain in our troubled history.
It is beyond question, that had it not been for Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, whatever one might think of either man in relation to other aspects of their time in office, there would have been no Belfast Agreement.
It was their courage, tenacity, political skill and deep commitment to remoulding relationships that brought the accord into being.
Let us not forget, either, that the signing marked only a beginning. Having managed to get an agreement, Ahern and Blair then had to spend the best part of the following decade working tirelessly to make it a reality.
In his time as Taoiseach, Ahern won the trust and affection of the unionist community in Northern Ireland to an extent beyond even that enjoyed by former president Mary Robinson.
He did so, not by deviating from the united Ireland aspirations of fellow Irish republicans, but by bringing those aspirations into line with hard reality.
He outlined the only acceptable conditions for unity again last weekend: "If it is done by any means of coercion, or divisiveness, or threats, it will never happen. "We'll stay at a very peaceful Ireland and I think time will be the healer providing people, in a dedicated way, work for the better good of everyone on the island. If it doesn't prove possible, then it stays the way it is under the Good Friday agreement, and people will just have to be tolerant of that if it's not possible to bring it any further."
And what reasonable person could find fault with any of that?
All things considered, if his political career has indeed ended in failure, then there must be a considerable number of envious politicians out there wishing they could fail in a similar fashion to Bertie Ahern.