Spokesmen sent out to bat for Fianna Fail these days follow the line that the past is another country, which is another way of saying that the party isn't the one Charles Haughey led.
Fianna Fail, they say, had nothing to do with Haughey's financial shenanigans. Less attention is paid to a more persuasive case: that the state of its leader's finances had a marked and, at critical moments, bizarre effect on the party.
Several extraordinary changes of direction, which baffled observers when they happened, may need to be re-examined in the light of disclosures at the McCracken and Moriarty tribunals.
Observers, allies and opposition had long recognised Haughey's insatiable appetite for power. Only now are they beginning to realise that it had as much to do with money as with ideology or ambition.
He wanted to be in office, not just because of the leverage it gave him, or the ability to hand out favours; he needed to be in office because, when he was not, the funds from his allies in business dried up.
It was in opposition in the 1970s that he ran up the debt with AIB which was written off when office beckoned. It was in opposition that he had to take out a £400,000 loan at a bank in the Cayman Islands.
His financial problems may not have been common knowledge, but senior members of the party knew of his offshore accounts 20 years ago. Yet when Des Crowley reported on his indebtedness in the Evening Press, the AIB insisted on a comprehensive - and misleading - denial.
Bankruptcy is an even more serious threat for TDs than for others: if a deputy were declared bankrupt his removal from the Dail would be immediate and irrevocable. (Ironically, it's the only offence in politics for which the penalty is so severe.)
But avoiding bankruptcy, though essential, was not enough. To achieve Haughey's political ambition - and keep the funds flowing - it was necessary to become leader of FF and taoiseach.
After the 1977 election, Lynch, with his historic but unmanageable majority, was Haughey's first target. In the following two years there were tentative attempts to raise the question of leadership. None was openly associated with Haughey, though none of Lynch's allies had any doubt about their provenance, however weak the evidence.
The most intriguing suspicion was raised by a rumour, which coincided with the visit of Pope John Paul, that Paddy Hillery might be about to resign the Presidency, "for personal reasons". The president was forced to call a press conference to say that he wasn't about to quit. The episode was never fully explained. Indeed, one of the few public references to it was in Sean O Mordha's recently broadcast series, Seven Ages.
In the programme a leading historian, Dermot Keogh, said Hillery believed "structural rumours" had been spread, clearly with political intent. As Keogh saw it, some people were worried by the possibility that, when his term as president ended, Hillery would contest the leadership of the party.
Others among Lynch's allies, who also suspected the rumour had been spread for political reasons, pointed out that, if Hillery had resigned, Lynch might have been persuaded to take his place. Leaving the offices of party leader and Taoiseach open for competition.
Were these efforts to force Lynch into Aras an Uachtarain? Or to block Hillery's candidature for the leadership? In either case, Haughey was the man with most to gain or lose. Even in 1979, it seemed an incredible series of events. Now it's clear the stakes were higher than we knew. And by the end of the year Haughey was leader and taoiseach.
Hillery, to his credit, remained in the Presidency and in 1982 headed off attempts to change governments without an election after the fall of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition. The attempts included telephone calls to Aras an Uachtarain, one of which was made - in Haughey's interest - by Brian Lenihan. When he admitted this to Jim Duffy nine years later, Lenihan was dismissed from the government - by Haughey - and lost the race for the Presidency.
Fianna Fail chose Haughey as its leader in preference to George Colley. A majority of its parliamentary party supported him when his leadership was challenged by Colley and Des O'Malley in 1982 and 1983. And in opposition in the mid-1980s a majority applauded as Haughey performed his most spectacular political gymnastics in an effort to force the Fine Gael-Labour coalition out of office. The ambition had become, once more, a financial imperative.
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael had caved in to demands for a referendum on abortion. And when the referendum was held, in 1983, it was on FF's wording. The party was now closer to Catholic fundamentalism than it had ever been.
But Haughey's changed directions also applied to the party's line on the national question. He had prepared the ground for significant developments in Anglo-Irish relations at his meeting with Margaret Thatcher in Dublin Castle in 1980.
He was properly credited with that contribution by political opponents as well as by commentators at home and abroad. But three years later he raised unnecessary difficulties at the forum set up to redefine nationalism in the context of a new Ireland. The forum's report for the first time committed all the leading nationalist parties to a united approach. But no sooner had Haughey signed it than he insisted on the rights of parties to go their own way.
Two years later, when the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed at Hillborough in November 1985, he claimed it was unconstitutional and packed Lenihan off to the United States to campaign against it.
This seemed an extraordinary decision, more in tune with the aftermath of the Civil War than with the 1980s. Some tried to explain it as personal begrudgery, the reaction of a leader who couldn't come to terms with playing second fiddle to his oldest enemy, Garret FitzGerald.
Some of his friends at this time spoke of an impatience that bordered on desperation. It was on arrival in office in 1987, after four years in opposition, that the cry for help raised on his behalf by Des Traynor produced such astonishing results that the major donor Ben Dunne was surprised by his own generosity.
The irony for the population at large is that payback time for politicians and their friends doesn't necessarily coincide with benefits to the public. Of course, all of this is embarrassing for the party. But embarrassment is the least of the party's worries: it's easier to live down than the suspicion that anyone who'd come under Haughey's influence must have picked up some of his habits.
In a populist party the only thing more important than daemonic leadership is unquestioning loyalty. The spirit of the party resides in the leader and the spirit of the leader in the party. It will take more than a few plausible speeches and a shoulder-shrug to Olivia O'Leary to get rid of it.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie