Analysis: Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is usually a man to offer open-ended sentences, capable of being heard in different ways depending on the opinion of the listener.
Standing in St Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton yesterday evening beside the grave of Charles J Haughey, he broke with the habit of a lifetime and came down unequivocally on the side of his former leader.
In truth, he was on a hiding to nothing. If he supported Mr Haughey, he would infuriate some. If he did not, he would infuriate many others.
If he offered neutral, timid words, he would have been damned as weak.
However, Mr Ahern made not just a positive eulogy. He nailed his colours to the mast, and he did so with feeling - coupled with signs of tears, throat catches, and a speedy exit from the podium to hug Mr Haughey's brother, Fr Eoghan.
The Haughey funeral was always going to be a difficult test for Mr Ahern, who has played a delicate balancing act in his relationship with his former mentor as Mr Haughey's reputation nose-dived before tribunals.
In 1997, though he did not identify Mr Haughey by name, Mr Ahern told the Fianna Fáil Ardfheis that "there would be no place in our party today" for someone who took large gifts, even if no favours were sought, or given.
Just a day later, he declared: "We will not tolerate any deviation from the benchmarks of honour at local level, or in Leinster House, be it in the past, the present or the future.
"No one, no one, is welcome in this party if they betrayed the public trust. I say this with every fibre of my being," he told delegates in the RDS, Ballsbridge.
However, he carefully leavened his remarks, as he did in January 1998 when he said that he did not "want to see any more fall on the head of Charlie Haughey", shortly after Ray Burke quit as minister for foreign affairs.
Certainly, yesterday's speech will be welcomed within FF, particularly by those still fond of Mr Haughey, but also by surviving opponents who would still have wanted a FF leader to be buried with dignity.
In reality, the majority of today's FF TDs, three general elections on from his retirement, are divorced by time and generation from Mr Haughey, who most would not have known.
Mr Ahern, though, had to speak not just to FF TDs and the party's organisation but also to the public at large. Here, however, the judgment on Mr Ahern's speech has yet to be made.
Restricted by the traditional Irish habit of not speaking ill of the dead, at least before the burial, many have held their tongues faced with homages to Mr Haughey since his death.
However, the TV clips of a clearly emotional Mr Ahern calling Mr Haughey "Boss", along with the sight of Ray Burke, Pádraig Flynn and tribunal-prominent builders, will jar with many.
For days, Haughey loyalists have argued successfully that their man was a champion of Ireland who did more good than harm, only to be brought down by pygmies in politics and the media.
For some, this is historical revisionism. For others, it fairly judges an extraordinary man of intellect, charisma and spirit who became "the dominating figure in late 20th-century Ireland", in Mr Ahern's own words.
However, Mr Ahern's airbrushing of Mr Haughey's 1979 economic failures and his leadership struggles as merely the difficulties endured by one who sought not "to ride the winds, and tides" is revisionism.
Judging by his selection of Theodore Roosevelt's "it's not the critic" quotation, one that graced Mr Haughey's Kinsealy home, Mr Ahern may now see similarities between himself and the man he called "The Boss".
However, the majority of those under 40 years of age may care less about Mr Haughey than those in the media and politics, who lived some of their best professional days under Mr Haughey's shadow, may want to accept.
Such voters may side against FF in the next election but, if they do, it is more likely to be for failings they deem to be the fault of Mr Ahern, and not of a man 14 years gone from the corridors of power.