The Taoiseach's performance in the Dail on Wednesday sounded more like Spike Milligan on Hitler's downfall than Bertie Ahern on Denis Foley's.
His account of their famous pre-Christmas chat about Moriarty's examination of Foley's affairs may not find a place in the history books. (Mary Hanafin says it won't.)
But if anyone rushes out a guide called Slow Steps to Ethics in Office it's bound to be there, in a chapter headed "Ask No Questions - the Ahern Way".
For, although Foley told him that Des Traynor was handling his investments and the whole State knew that Traynor-designed Ansbacher accounts were at the core of Moriarty's inquiry, Ahern was too shy to ask if, by any chance, Foley too was an Ansbacher man.
You see, he'd looked up a list that Mary Harney had given him; Foley's name wasn't on it and that was that. His man was in the clear. Ansbacher may have been on the tip of everyone else's tongue; the Taoiseach never mentioned it.
Neither did Foley. The deputy, then vice-chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, which had lately completed its investigation of tax evasion, had more than £130,000 stashed away. He just didn't know where.
But at their tete-a-tete Foley told Ahern that he'd resign from the committee at "the earliest appropriate opportunity". After Christmas. In a few weeks' time. When Mr Justice Moriarty resumed his hearings.
He'd been hoping and praying that, in spite of the headed paper and amounts in sterling, he wouldn't turn out to be the holder of an Ansbacher account. But that was what he was.
Since Foley's problems came to light, many must have wondered not at his failure to realise that he had an Ansbacher account, but at the presumption that a gullible public would swallow the story.
And after Ahern's performance on Wednesday the wonder must be that he, too, could keep a straight face while he claimed yet again that he'd been trying for the last three years to raise standards in politics and clean up the party.
We heard it all before.
We heard it after Ahern's arrival as leader of Fianna Fail; before, during and after the 1997 election; before, during and after Ray Burke's resignation; during the half-hearted attempts to escape the clutches of Haughey, the entanglements of Padraig Flynn, the trail of ruined farmers in John Ellis's wake . . .
Now Ahern claims some success. He made a virtue of the fact that Foley had not only resigned from the Public Accounts Committee but from the Fianna Fail parliamentary party. With apologies all round.
He suggested that Fianna Fail was the first and only party to take action designed to improve standards in public life.
And he said: "The Fianna Fail parliamentary party this morning approved a code of conduct, which will be submitted first to the national executive and then to the Fianna Fail Ardfheis early next month, to come into effect immediately thereafter."
Unfortunately, Ahern's claims had already been undermined by his colleagues. A report by Miriam Donohoe and Kevin Rafter in The Irish Times on Wednesday confirmed that the first version of Standards in Public Life had now been significantly diluted.
For instance, "the first version last year included a proposal that all [election] candidates would have to produce a certificate of tax compliance from the Revenue Commissioners. That proposal was rejected out of hand by backbenchers".
In the Dail, Ahern summarised the latest version of this requirement: "Anyone standing for election must be able to confirm that their tax affairs are either in order or are being finally put in order."
Given his own record of close questioning of party colleagues - Burke, Flynn, Ellis and Foley (to name but a few) - the test is unlikely to be failed by many potential candidates.
And, as Miriam Donohoe and Kevin Rafter reported, this is the eighth version of the standards document, which has now been in the course of preparation for a year or more.
Mary Hanafin, lately - and deservedly - appointed a Minister of State, bridles at the Opposition's criticism which, as she sees it, focuses "on peripheral performances at a time of historic happenings".
"Since I entered this House in 1997," she said as the debate - on a Fine Gael private members' motion - began, "the same tune has been sung from the opposition benches. This tune seeks to demonise Fianna Fail, its leader, its ministers, its deputies and its membership throughout the country.
"Its lyrics are consistent and monotonous. It is the single transferable song of the opposition. It has at this stage become an electoral lament, a sad dirge of recognition by opposition members that they cannot best Fianna Fail policies, they cannot best Fianna Fail achievements and, in particular, they cannot best the charisma and success of Deputy Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach."
The debate, you would not have learned from this contribution, was on Ahern's role in the Foley affair, which has once more made politics and politicians the laughing stock of the country.
But politics and politicians are not now laughed at as Jimmy O'Dea once laughed at them or as the artists and writers of Dublin Opinion once pointed to some relatively harmless pretensions and foibles.
The laughter now jeers all politicians for the activities of a small but powerful clique operating mostly in and around Fianna Fail, less often in Fine Gael; always with a set of mean, socially destructive objects in view.
His audience in Dublin Castle laughed at Foley when he said that after he'd discovered the truth about his bank accounts he "went into denial". (His neighbours in Kerry laughed too but, as they told Vincent Browne and Paschal Sheehy of RTE, they're waiting for the Lowry factor to come to his aid.)
It's a much more serious business when a party of the size and significance of Fianna Fail goes into denial because it hasn't the gumption to face up to its record over the past 20 years.
Fianna Fail, as Hanafin says, has an honourable history of service to the people. That history will be forgotten if all that her leader has to offer is meaningless guff and all she has to offer is rubbish about his charisma.
It's about time the shrinking violets on the opposition benches followed Michael D. Higgins's example and reflected the anger of their supporters and the frustration of those who don't vote.