SOME people would have preferred John Bruton to have been less gung ho about the Northern Ireland talks and an IRA ceasefire - during his visit to the White House.
Yes, the US presidential election is only two months away. And President Clinton has been extraordinarily supportive and generous to Ireland. But the goodwill requirements made on a guest extend only so far. The Taoiseach might have cut his cloth a little closer to the Northern Ireland measure.
A positive image of US involvement in Northern Ireland was de rigueur for a visiting Taoiseach. But raising the prospect of a breakthrough and a new IRA ceasefire seemed excessive to many, given the gloom which currently pervades the corridors at Stormont.
Of course, there has been some progress. Last week's meeting between John Hume and David Trimble at Aldergrove, near Belfast, was an important development. The SDLP and UUP are currently exploring ways in which the arms decommissioning issue might be addressed through committees, so that progress could be made on other substantive matters in the multi party talks.
As of now, however, it is all very tentative, and there is no agreement. And Mr Bruton's comments in the United States might not have been terribly helpful, especially as they were garbled in transmission.
The tyranny of the television sound bite destroys context. And while Mr Bruton did raise the prospect of an IRA ceasefire which would hold in all circumstances, and of political progress being made in Belfast, he entered many qualifications. Some of these were ignored in early reports, and it appeared that a deal was being hatched in Belfast.
That said, Mr Bruton did seem to be reflecting a different reality from the bleak one we have come to know this summer. There was movement and change and hope in his analysis while, back in Belfast, the DUP was trying to exclude the loyalist parties from the talks process.
David Trimble is now in the hot seat. Along with John Hume, he will be expected to agree some of the conditions which could lead to an IRA ceasefire. And Sinn Fein, in turn, will have to explain what kind of "footsie" it has been playing with President Clinton's people in the United States.
Two minor elements under pinned Mr Bruton's optimism. The first was the positive Hume Trimble meeting after a summer of communal madness. And the second was linked to the US State Department. There was, one source said, "an upbeat feeling in Washington", which had been carefully nurtured by Sinn Fein.
Reassuring Mr Clinton that the IRA would not rain on his presidential parade was an obvious Sinn Fein gesture. But the suggestion of a renewed IRA ceasefire moved the game into a different political ball park.
The shutters came down in Belfast and Dublin. In spite of last week's comments by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, senior Sinn Fein sources saw no prospect of a ceasefire in the absence of a new initiative by the Irish and British governments.
Given the unheralded nature of the first IRA ceasefire, however, and the role played by the Americans at that time, nobody was taking anything for granted.
Republicans here were said to be extraordinarily anxious to find