Not for the first time, Ian Paisley has helped northern nationalists - and northern republicans - to boost their own self-image, and perhaps even their arguments. The primary effect of the DUP leader's attacks on President McAleese is to remind the Republic, if any reminder is needed, of how little the present leader of unionism thinks himself in need of reconstruction, much less repentance, writes Fionnuala O Connor
But it is also a marker of the distance travelled in a process sometimes depicted as entirely fraudulent and cosmetic. For those who remember how the now-respected, second-term President was once reviled as a republican fellow-traveller, there is a nice symmetry in the fact that unionist criticism of her may be of assistance to semi-reconstructed republicans.
It comes as republicans steel themselves for a prolonged stalemate, largely dictated by Ian Paisley. Sinn Féin must expect increasing pressure from the Dublin political establishment to sign up for policing in Northern Ireland and to work harder at ridding themselves of the taint of paramilitarism and criminality, North and South. But the pressure that would count most may never develop.
The SF leaders are more concerned about internal management than they are about holding their northern vote - stiffened with each Paisley decibel - and not nearly as anxious about potential damage to their vote in the Republic as the other parties would like them to be.
Chit-chat in the margins of SF ardfheiseanna rarely produces searing insights, but it can certainly illuminate the mindset of the moment.
Last weekend's procession of electoral hopefuls to the microphone didn't just provide media training and showcase the party's appeal to youth. Off-platform, the newest recruits sounded convincing about their doorstep experiences. If they face accusations and criticism about money-laundering and continued IRA activity, they conceal it well.
"You only ever get that from members of other parties," was how one summed it up.
After decades of defending murder, republicans are connoisseurs of condemnation. In the post-decommissioning age and from unpopular sources, it is no hardship.
Indeed, being lambasted by the right people can rally existing supporters and attract new ones. Better yet if you can swing in behind popular indignation at criticism of someone else.
The Paisley eloquence is heedless: counting the cost is for lesser mortals.
Northern observers judge that his McAleese diatribes are classics: much like this week's refusal to talk to representatives of a Dublin Government he has already met repeatedly; exercise for his wilful tongue and distraction for his own supporters.
Attacking Mrs McAleese was something of a unionist habit in the phase of her varied career immediately before the Park. At that point the hostility came not from the DUP but from Ulster Unionists offended by her as frontrunner for newly-ascendant Catholics in Queen's University, most prominent beneficiary, in their eyes, of the abominated "fair employment industry".
Nearly two decades later, the McAleese name is an all-Ireland brand, and reactions to the woman who once pipped David Trimble to a senior Queen's post are heavily coloured by the role she has filled so distinctively since 1997.
It is hard to imagine anyone close to Ian Paisley pointing out the downside of having a go at the northerner in the Park, when her origins have long been absorbed into the modern Republic's picture of itself. It is also a principle of hardline unionism to deny legitimacy and status to the "foreign country" which begins at the Border, and which, some still profess to believe, harbours plans to march on Belfast. For the most part this is no more than pretence.
After their trips to Dublin and negotiation in England, the latest DUP tack of withdrawing from talks with Dublin ministers fools nobody but their most innocent supporters.
There remains a market for anti-Irish, anti-nationalist and anti-Catholic abuse, and the revived, resurgent leader of the DUP and the Free Presbyterian church is the man to dish it out. Most Paisley fiats on Sinn Féin's lack of democratic credentials brings the retort of "who does he think he is?" to the lips of all kinds of northern nationalists. It must by now be popping into the heads of more than a few on the other side of the Border.
There are nationalist doubts about the contacts between the couple in Áras an Uachtaráin and loyalist paramilitary figures, even among those proud of the northerner in the South's highest office. But these are in-house doubts.
A demagogue who spouts wild charges against a popular head of State is always going to lack conviction as a judge of Sinn Féin's fitness for government. He may be the best weapon republicans retain. And the more the IRA fades while loyalist violence continues, the more unlikely his strictures will sound.