Bertie Ahern has been Taoiseach for a longer span than Éamon de Valera. Fifty years from now, historians will focus not on the Manchester Dig-Out but on the past decade as a period of unprecedented affluence in our nation's history. Yet there is no signature building left to mark the era. The Bertie Bowl proved a mirage (unless you count the leaky National Aquatic Centre) and Croke Park (perhaps his favourite haunt) can never be renamed.
What was Ahernism? The very word looks wrong, as if such a down-home man-of-the-people would never have aspired to anything so pretentious as a philosophy. In truth, by the time he became Taoiseach, so much of our national sovereignty had been ceded to the European Union and to global capital that it made good sense for him to strike no grandiose pose.
Ahern was probably the hardest-working Taoiseach in the history of the State; and by patience, affability and attention to detail, he became a legendary deal-maker. Irish politics has always been brokerist and clientelist and that is its weakness - it is organised around the soggy centre, with ward-healers watching every local development for moments when votes may be gained or lost.
But, applied on a larger stage, that weakness can become a strength. In many protracted sets of negotiations on Northern Ireland, Ahern established a deep rapport with Tony Blair and his entourage. That proved invaluable in making the peace process take hold.
In a similar way, when Ireland held the presidency of the European Union, Ahern's skills as negotiator helped break legal logjams and gave our country a major profile well beyond its actual size.
Blokeism was the style of politics favoured by Blair (as earlier by Clinton). "Bertie" fitted in perfectly with these transatlantic models, as the information highway and cheap travel drew Ireland ever closer to both the US and Britain.
At home, Ahern presided over an astonishing boom in the buildings and property sector, which (for all the doom-mongers) shows no sign of abating. Immigrants played a crucial role in our economic take-off. The Government was initially slow in celebrating and protecting these new recruits to a multicultural Ireland - but at least it encouraged the development.
The rate of change over the past decade has been breath-taking - one reason why it's difficult to find any stable themes that characterise Ahern's leadership. There is now a weekly Polish supplement supplied with Dublin's evening newspaper. The city's main department store employs a Chinese person to liaise full-time with workers and shoppers from that ethnic community.
Certain contradictions, already latent when Ahern took over, became deeper-rooted in his period of office. As the country adapted ever more closely to the social democratic laws and cultural practices of the European Union, the economy that emerged on the ground was far more characteristic of American capitalism. A leader more visionary than Ahern might have urged the people to move beyond this Boston/Berlin dichotomy and imagine some truly Irish alternative, which blended the better elements of both worlds - but that wasn't his style.
Bertie saw himself as a cautious moderniser. He is a separated husband who has spoken with sympathy for those who suffer marital breakdown - but he hasn't remarried. He has promoted all kinds of new businesses, while worrying about the collapse of voluntarism and community feeling. He has launched books and arts initiatives, while his Government marginalised the arts and humanities in our universities.
The coming election will be fought around such contradictions. Dublin used to be the electoral cockpit, but that will now be found in the vast suburban sprawl from Gorey through Carlow up to Navan. There live young parents who commute for four hours a day. Their children attend local schools, which often hold far more kids than they were built for. The parents utilise local resources, while having little time in which to contribute to their communities. Longer-standing members of these communities often resent the blow-ins, who spend most of their cash in Dublin.
Nobody can knock on these young parents' doors after 8pm. Nobody really knows what they think. The PDs are convinced that they will vote for them. But I wonder.
Low taxes lead to bad roads, dodgy school buses, long lines in hospitals - what JK Galbraith memorably described in The Affluent Society as public squalor amid private affluence. There is now little time for talk; manners have degenerated; and road rage abounds. If Bertie Ahern wishes to be remembered as something more than a fixer, he should lead the coming debate on how best to restore cultural and community values. But will he? He has just a few months.