Haughey was an opportunistic pragmatist

Other people say they're sorry; Charles Haughey's approach was different. "Never explain, never apologise

Other people say they're sorry; Charles Haughey's approach was different. "Never explain, never apologise." His pals apparently still regard that brazen mantra as evidence of magisterial leadership.

Yet, no responsible parent or teacher would encourage any child to adopt such an attitude to justify bad behaviour. Haughey was neither a radical nor a revolutionary, he was an opportunistic pragmatist who broke the rules and was celebrated for getting away with it. In a society where failure to pay a TV licence is a criminal offence, he repeatedly navigated the law, believing laws are there to control lesser citizens.

He has been described as a "threat to the democratic process" and has left quite a mess - most obviously the embarrassment of Tribunal Ireland as initiated by his homespun use of his political status and gullible businessmen to provide personal finance. Yet commentators have been drawing from literature and history to discuss his "legacy" - in reality a masterclass in how to survive politically while living like an aristocrat if pretending to be one of the people. The hijacking of literary and classical rhetoric amounts to an extraordinary abuse of language. It would have taken a Yeats or a Swift to put even the past 10 days, never mind Haughey's maverick adventures, into perspective.

Haughey was indulged, envied and, most sickening of all, admired for his egotistical daring. Instead of the prison sentence he deserved, he got a State funeral complete with casket draped in the Tricolour. That State funeral with its weird echoes of Eva Peron's send off, didn't conform to the rules either. Choreographed by the man himself, it became a Fianna Fáil quasi-Diana public relations flop at which protocol drew the non-party members - not emotion. It did not fool the public. The Irish people, preoccupied by a farcical health service, gangland murders throughout his north Dublin constituency and a terrifying increase in young male suicide, have far more pressing concerns than a disgraced former taoiseach.

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All the nostalgia, myth making and competitive mourning was left to journalists, who are obliged to write something. We should be grateful Haughey did not demand to be interred at Tara, or Newgrange, or on his own island. Nor did he divvy up lands at Abbeville to build schools or rest homes. By far the most intriguing aspect of the funeral was Bertie Ahern's decision to re-attach himself to the one time mentor from whom he had actively distanced himself.

Compare this funeral with another recent burial, that of the writer John McGahern, who served his people well, albeit indirectly, by helping us open our eyes. Family, friends and admirers gathered, including Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Michael Longley and Tom Murphy in a tiny church outside a Leitrim village. There was no oration, no theatre, just overwhelming sadness.

The old fear has been replaced by resentment. While the journalists were lamenting the departure of the goose who had laid all those stories, the general public is engaged with darker realities. Respect is easily lost. Parents and teachers must now explain the ambivalence created by Haughey.

Over the course of a week that seems to have gone on forever, non-historians have presumed to offer definitive historical assessments despite the absence of documents - not all the relevant State papers are yet due for release and some documentation is known to have been discarded, while brown envelopes and cheques seldom feature as archival material. There is no conclusive historical record as such. One reason so much is known is because of the traditional bully-boy Fianna Fáil bravado and the "Boyo, I knew your father well" slap on the back politics as practised by some of its party members.

Gossip made the scams and the abuse of power public in a back door sort of way. It also inspired the brilliant satire, Scrap Saturday, which, in turn, did a public service, by informing the people. Historians are wary of being quoted. Commentators have mixed feelings. Friends turned up on the radio contentedly praising his love of things French, stressing that "Charlie was our first real statesman, before him Irish politicians were badly dressed hicks". Expensive clothes don't make a gentleman, and they don't make a statesman either. Again, think of the confusion and contradiction being thrust on the young aware of Parnell, Isaac Butt, John Redmond, de Valera. The young need to look well beyond Haughey if they want to study a statesman. He has been called a patriot but it is an epithet he didn't earn - the first Erskine Childers did, with his idealism and, ultimately, his life. We have real heroes - Henry Flood, Henry Grattan, Michael Davitt, Thomas Clarke, James Connolly, Jim Larkin, Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, Constance Markievicz, Seán Lemass - Haughey may have been a character, but he was no hero.

Over the past week the newspapers and radio chat shows of Ireland have devoted pages of newsprint and hours of airtime to celebrating, excusing, denying and reinventing Haughey. Commentators have eulogised and speculated about his "legacy", his "place in history" and, most comically of all, his princely delusions, leaving the entire concept of history and public service confused and distorted as is the use of literary references.

Haughey's interest in archaeology, the arts, good wine and horses have been used as evidence of his goodness. This does not make sense. Nor does the blurring of the private and the public. Everyone is entitled to the private. All families mourn. But Haughey's record as a politician should not be assessed by drawing in his performance as a husband, a father or a grandfather, or even as a friend - although the treatment of the late Brian Lenihan, including taking money donated for his medical expenses, is an awkward episode to skirt about.

Haughey's patronage of the arts is also contentious. Aosdána is important, so too was the establishment of IMMA and its splendid home at The Royal Hospital, but the tax exemption for artists has been as exploited as it has been helpful. Non-nationals have availed of it, and tax is a minefield. The Arts Council should have been given more power. Remember it was Haughey who also abolished the Irish Film Board (later revived under Michael D Higgins). Haughey's apparent preoccupation or distracted state in 1990-91, impacted badly on Dublin's chaotic handling of its term as European City of Culture. He, or perhaps his speech writer, famously likened him to Othello. But even Haughey must have suspected he had more in common with Richard III. The Shakespearean references are ridiculous, this story is The Sopranos in an Irish setting. Haughey is Fagan, not Julius Caesar.

We have had to hear him being compared - hopefully, ironically, with high kings, princes and medieval monarchs. Despite having Lemass as a father-in-law, Haughey was really an old-style ham actor who aspired to the very thing generations of Irish patriots battled against - the ascendancy ruling class. Now we have Haughey as a misguided Jay Gatsby. More misapplied romanticism. But Fitzgerald's masterpiece does provide an insight. At the opening of the novel, bewildered narrator, Nick Carraway, recalls his father once telling him "that a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth".

It is a valid observation and particularly pertinent during this time of ambivalent reassessment.