ALBERT Reynolds took time off last weekend to become, a report in this newspaper had it, the reluctant star of Fianna Fail's biggest fund-raiser outside Ireland.
And from New York, where guests paid up to 510,000 a table to join Bertie Ahern and half a dozen former ministers at the party's 70th anniversary celebrations, Mr Reynolds sent a blunt message to Britain.
"Don't mess around with the Irish," he said. "We're a proud people and we won't take it."
At the best of times, it would have been an inexplicably pugnacious message from a former Taoiseach who savours an international reputation as a peacemaker.
In these days of heightened uncertainty, the risks of being misunderstood must have been obvious. And, indeed, within days, some so-called republicans had planted a 600 lb bomb in Derry.
No doubt, the message the bombers meant to convey was the same as that sent by Mr Reynolds, though with a world of difference in the delivery and intended results.
John Hume made the point when he reflected on social and economic improvements in Derry during the last few years. He called the bombers the enemies of Ireland. The real enemies,
Mr Reynolds, however, was also anticipating the tone of reactions to another event - the result of his libel action against the Sunday Times which had yet to be delivered by a jury in London and conveyed breathlessly to the public here by RTE. No sooner had Joe Duffy's news interrupted the mid-afternoon phone calls on Liveline than Marian Finucane was able to report reaction from all over the country.
It could be summed up in a sentence: what else would you expect?
It was as if the British legal system had devised the award of derisory damages simply to spike Mr Reynolds's guns.
As though a similar award by an Irish court had not blighted the political career of Jack McQuillan of Clann na Poblachta and Labour in the neighbouring constituency of Roscommon.
Mr McQuillan, who is now one of my neighbours in Bray, had served a shade longer in the Oireachtas than Mr Reynolds but was less able to bear the costs of pyrrhic victory.
Mr Reynolds spoke in several interviews of his own ability to pay the price of clearing his name but insisted that it was "unjust, immoral and wrong" to have to pay.
AS the week wore on he made more of his refusal to meet the Sunday Times's costs, his determination to fight on, on the issue of qualified privilege - which, the paper insists, extends to coverage of the Dail - and of his determination to appeal.
He also began to see himself as a victim: "We did not get justice in that court," he told Vincent Browne in a radio interview.
The jury's initial award of zero damages, later raised by the judge to a penny, was stinging: "They weren't just insulting me. They insulted Ireland."
But, he insisted again and again, as he repeated complaints about how long the case had taken, the way it had been heard and the judge's summing up, it isn't over yet.
He had cleared his name: "There'll never be an epitaph of me with liar written on it." Now, as so often in the past, vindication seemed, somehow, incomplete.
Those who had paid attention to his career remembered the Reynolds of old, from the tangled arguments with Des O'Malley and the Progressive Democrats to the collapse of the Fianna Fail-Labour coalition.
Claim and counter-claim reechoed through Merrion Street and Leinster House. Old ghosts were on the prowl, from Dublin Castle to the Four Courts and back.
Versions of events that had been parsed and analysed to death - before, during and after the hearings of the beef tribunal - were released from their cobwebs for another airing on the Strand.
The sentence that had been stitched together from bits 30 pages apart was unpicked, restitched and explained as vindication.
Don't mess around with the Irish, indeed. We have a way with words - and, if you don't look out, we'll have you hog-tied and mesmerised and every bit as confused as ourselves.
Of course, anyone who missed the swings in London, could have caught the roundabouts in Dublin, where Mr Reynolds's colleagues were trying to remind everyone what Dick Spring had said in 1994 without reminding them why he'd said it.
Here we were, back with the familiar features of political debate at its least productive: blunt demands and circular arguments.
In week one, Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats had properly pointed to some glaring examples of laxity in the Department of Justice but failed to shake the Coalition's confidence in the" Minister.
In week two, they continued to concentrate their fire on Nora Owen and Dermot Gleeson, but failed to take the opportunity to press for anything more serious than a change of personnel.
In week one, John Bruton had announced changes in the organisation of the courts and the prison service.
In week two, Mrs Owen "published a severe critique of her own Department's operations.
The changes announced by Mr Bruton were important, even if it took time - and the pressure of events - to force the Government to agree to them.
Mrs Owen reports some harsh criticism of her Department, not only in the published critique but in the Cabinet.
INDEED, one of the best - and most critical - contributions in the Dail was Pat Rabbitte's: "The picture the report paints is one of mismanagement, failure of authority, evasion of responsibility, paper-shuffling and buck-passing.
Bertie Ahern, too, spoke sensibly of "a ramshackle Department with no evidence of the Minister taking action to improve efficiency and accountability...
"For the system to work it requires clear direction from the political head of the Department as well as from senior civil servants."
But, by and large, the Opposition ignored the opportunity to explore the need for reform and press for more radical change.
To the blunt demand for the heads of Mrs Owen and Mr Gleeson they hitched the circular argument that all good things came to an end with the change of government in 1994.
On being told the strength of the Garda Siochana at Question Time on Thursday, a clearly shocked John O'Donoghue informed the Minister that this was the force's lowest level - since 1992.
Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, who might have had something sensible to say about reform in Justice, chose, instead, to picture a glowing workforce whose spirits had been dowsed by Mrs Owen's arrival.
And Liz O'Donnell contributed to the general air of suspicion last weekend when she wondered, pointedly, on television, why Mr Spring had not been at Mrs Owen's side in the Dail.
The fact that Mr Spring had spent several days with Charlie Bird in Cairo had apparently escaped her attention.
This weekend Ms O'Donnell and her colleagues will be in Clare for a conference at which crime and tax reform will be central issues.
The reforms we need, not only in politics but in public life and in the public service, are both deeper and broader than changes in the tax system. And crime is not an issue that begins and ends with security.
If an alternative administration takes shape, and if it's to be a Fianna Fail-PD coalition, the Progressive Democrats will have an influence on its direction disproportionate to their size. {CORRECTION} 96112200167