MARY Robinson was asked by Dick Spring to accept a nomination for the Presidency at a moment when public life was poorly served by many, though not all who held office.
We were fumbling through the gloom of the late 1980s. Clouds of scandal swirled around Merrion Street and Leinster House. In politics and at the point at which politics and business intersect, standards had been reduced to the lowest common denominator.
Mrs Robinson's candidature caught the imagination of an electorate badly in need of inspiration. An electorate willing to be associated with a young and articulate woman who challenged the assumption that, to be President, you had to be male, middleaged or more and firmly rooted in the political establishment.
Her election was seen at home and abroad as a sign of new life springing through the cracks of an old and dusty institution. The office she came to occupy was designed to be largely, though not exclusively, ceremonial; and by the end of the 1980s its relevance to most citizens had shrunk to the point of invisibility. She breathed life into it.
The President must not intervene in the political affairs of the day: by her presence, Mrs Robinson drew attention, first to the existence, then to the conditions, of many who had been ignored - deliberately, or out of force of habit. The President didn't have the power to order public expenditure; Mrs Robinson succeeded in stirring the consciences of those who did. She managed it, both at home and in the international community.
It was not the President's function to instruct us in neglected areas like civics to make us realise the meaning and importance of community, or to improve relations with countries that many of her fellow citizens had never heard of. She gave us a more lively sense of ourselves and the people among whom we lived, a more subtle appreciation of myth and history and a deeper understanding of the value of neighbourliness.
She opened our eyes to conditions in countries that bore a shocking resemblance to our own; and to the plight of people whose experience in the 1990s was painfully close to that of our ancestors and their poorer neighbours in the 1840s.
All of this she achieved, not with rhetoric or piety or by talking down to her audiences, but with language both simple and eloquent and the same show of dignity wherever she went.
She has contributed greatly to our sense of maturity and confidence. Her term in office has marked a huge advance in the making of modern Ireland. She has helped make us citizens of the world.
It would be easier to feel confident in the future of modern Ireland if the results of the election had not been accompanied by so many reminders of the clouds that swirled through Merrion Street when Mr Spring invited Mrs Robinson to contest the Presidency.
Of course, there was muchtalk during the campaign of our determination to march into the 21st century with all flags flying.
Now though, it seems that far from taking the millennium by storm, we've chosen to turn our faces to the past, the better to reverse into the new age. This is not to suggest that the new government will automatically prove unstable, whether Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats form a minority administration or find an accommodation with a couple of Independents.
Stability depends largely on the determination of the partners big or small, to make it work; in this instance, on how FF and the PDs get along together and how, if they need them, they relate to the Independents.
Garret FitzGerald's government fell in 1982 not just because the Independents objected to taxing children's shoes but also, I suspect, because their views weren't even canvassed in advance of the Budget.
Fine Gael learned from that mistake, or so it seems from the party's performance in its present partnership. (Labour and Democratic Left have had nothing to complain about.)
Fianna Fail didn't learn. The party's experience with the PDs between 1989 and 1992 was repeated when it went into partnership with Labour. And then the trouble didn't suddenly arise when Ruairi Quinn and his friends came looking for a head in November 1994. Its origins lay in the tax amnesty, the passports affair and the row over publication of the beef tribunal report. Avoidable issues.
Senior members of FF, who were not only in a position to see but to suffer the consequences of clumsy handling and insensitivity in the first place, apparently found themselves powerless to prevent a repeat.
Now several of these exministers are in the running for Cabinet places once more. Which is why sensible observers fear that the best of governments - the tripartite coalition - may be followed by the worst, an administration in which Mr Ahern allows loyalty to cloud his better judgment.
So far, much of what passes for commentary has been about who will get what or where the Independents stand.
Will Mary Harney become Tanaiste? And will the PDs have an extra seat, though not a vote, in Cabinet?
Joe Higgins won't support either Ahern or Bruton; Harry Blaney refuses to back a government in which the PDs are partners; Jackie HealyRae and Mildred Fox bring demands from their constituencies. And so on.
But it's one thing to hold power, quite another to choose wisely what to do with it. For that a Taoiseach needs to select those colleagues who are best equipped for the task, which may mean those who are least likely to remind all and sundry of the bad old days.
MR Ahern himself refers to the priority for the new series of cuts: cutting tax, cutting crime and cutting public expenditure. Ms Harney speaks of a reforming government, with reform of the tax system at the top of the list.
The loadsamoney boys who cheered from the sidelines as Mr Ahern raced through the country will be first in line for the payback to which they feel entitled. They're unlikely to ask the Taoiseach in waiting for the vision with which he proposes to inspire the citizens when the tax cuts have been delivered and those who are not eligible for the bonanza stand waiting at the gates.
I expect that one of the first items on the agenda will be the removal from the Electoral Bill of the obligation to disclose political contributions. Anyone who expects a more rigorous system should not hold his breath.