From vilification to affirmation in less than 24 hours.
On Tuesday evening, a browned off Bertie Ahern had to endure speech after speech from Opposition deputies, denouncing him from a height for taking large amounts of cash for his personal use when he was a serving minister for finance.
They had the temerity to tell him, the most popular taoiseach ever, that nobody with a titter of wit believes the contrived and contradictory explanations he gave to the Mahon tribunal about how he got this money, and what he subsequently did with it.
They said the public is laughing at his testimony. They said that by his actions when minister and his evidence as Taoiseach, he breached the standards of high office entrusted to him by the people.
The cheek of them.
Now it's the morning after and Bertie has had time to reflect. "I listened last night to it all. I discount 98 per cent of what was said." In fact, having met that same public at the National Ploughing Championships in Offaly yesterday, the Taoiseach is of the view that those people who are questioning his credibility are a tiny minority.
"Some people put a lot of focus on things that 99 per cent don't," is his considered opinion. "When you're at my level, there's always somebody out to trip you up." After his torrid Dáil ordeal, Bertie Ahern took to the skies by helicopter to seek solace at the ploughing in Tullamore. Forty thousand people, who don't inhabit the Leinster House goldfish bowl, were there.
Surely, here was a cliché waiting for a home: "Damaged and isolated Taoiseach ploughs lonely furrow." The photographers massed in the stubble on the top field, ready to supply the definitive image.
And yes, Bertie stood behind a plough. And yes, he looked pensively at a furrow. And yes, the photographers took the snap.
But the cliché didn't fit. Far from it.
Only a man with an unerring confidence in his public would have risked this situation. Accordingly, the Taoiseach wasn't a bit worried.
He was mobbed by well-wishers, eager to shake his hand. Cries of "Go On Ber-tay!" rang through the air. Men slapped him on the back and thrust their children forward. Women cooed and simpered. Camera phones were held high. Filthy looks were directed at reporters.
Nobody said a bitter word to Bertie, for here he was, mingling in his waxed jacket and clean green wellies, charming all around him.
"Howaya, lads!" to the boys. "Howya keeping?" to the girls. And "Fair play to ya!" to anybody there in a working capacity.
He paid a quick visit to the competition field, standing behind an old-fashioned plough as he marvelled at the lines of freshly turned sod. "Fair play to ya!" He made a beeline for two magnificently photogenic work horses ("Howaya lads!") and stood, smiling, between them.
Then it was into the Range Rover and down to work the crowd in the teeming trade stand and exhibition area. When he got there, Bertie set off at general election pace. Within seconds, he vanished into a sea of people, effortlessly giving a distraught media the slip.
At one point, even the Garda lost him. There was consternation outside the craft pavilion. A garda put his finger to his earpiece - "He's down there! He's on his own!" - and three uniforms went flying off in the direction of the Revenue Commissioners' stand.
But Bertie hadn't stopped there. He eventually pitched up at the Fianna Fáil marquee, where he was met by applause and cheers, and security men had to hold the crowd back at the doors. "Lads, lads, he'll be out in a minute."
Coillte, the forestry agency, gave him a gift of a mildly poisonous sapling: Viburnum opulus (Guelder-rose).
On the sidelines, quite a few smart remarks could be heard as the Taoiseach passed by. They were all about donations and dig-outs and whiparounds. Nobody seemed angry, though - they just seemed to think it very funny.
All good things must come to an end though and, for Bertie, that meant a press conference at the media centre with journalists who were not all from the farming press.
He was first asked about the bovine virus "bluetongue," not to be confused with the Fine Gael variant, "Blueshirt-tongue". Bertie felt its lash on Tuesday night.
On his first public outing since the Dáil confidence vote, the Taoiseach adopted a demeanour of martyred vindication. But to be fair to him, he hasn't lost his sense of humour.
His assessment of the Opposition's performance, when they repeatedly highlighted the incredible details of his forgetful and changing tribunal testimony, was richly comic.
"There were so many accusations thrown last night, I'd be here till tomorrow if I was to try correct them: people changing events, changing facts, misreading events, mixing up details. But you have to take it, you have to take it and get on with it. Pots, kettles and black came to mind.
"I listened last night, patiently, to it all. I discount about 98 per cent of what was said."
Clearly, he's of the view that his detractors in Leinster House are the ones ploughing the lonely furrow. Does he still think he retains the trust of the people? "Oh yes. There's no doubt about it - everyone, except Fine Gael." That's not to say he didn't experience his own dark night of the soul.
You have to wonder, he mused aloud, when you listen to what is said in the Dáil, and then you go to an event like the ploughing and walk among "thousands and thousands" of people and not one mentions the goings on of the night before.
"I mean, it does say something, doesn't it?" he shrugged sadly.
And what, what does it say, Taoiseach? Bertie supplied the answer. "Some people put a lot of focus on things that 99 per cent of people don't."
But he rises above that. He explained that at his level, there's always somebody out to get you. The debate was pretty rough, though.
"As debates go, it was fairly low and, unfortunately, I felt that some of the new Fine Gael people, you know, were bringing a new low into it."
In fact, some of them descended into "gutter politics". Then he went out for another little walkabout before he departed, applause ringing in his ears.
That's one in the eye for the disconnected and disgruntled in Leinster House.
Bertie got the affirmation he needed yesterday.
The nation is behind him, and believes him. The begrudgers are 98 per cent wrong. The nation believes him. The people are 99 per cent behind him.
One thing you can say for Bertie - always gets his figures right. Doesn't he? (It's only money he has difficulty with.)
