It is fitting and not a little poignant that Bertie Ahern's last day in America as Ireland's premier will be spent in Boston.
For the better part of two centuries, Irishmen came here looking for a better life. But the economy improved so much on Ahern's watch that few come here anymore. And as it gets harder for those here illegally, many are going home.
So is Ahern, tomorrow, after a talk at Harvard and a stop at the library named for one of his heroes, Jack Kennedy.
Yesterday, Ahern spoke to a joint session of Congress. It was a long way from Drumcondra, his neighborhood on Dublin's gritty Northside.
"It was an honor," Ahern was telling me over the phone from Washington, after he thanked America for helping to end the war in his country and after he encouraged Americans to heed President Bush's desire to "find a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally, to resolve a complicated issue in a way that upholds both America's laws and her highest ideals."
After 11 years as taoiseach - it's pronounced tee-shock, and it means chief in Irish - Ahern is stepping down Tuesday. Questions about his personal finances forced him to leave sooner than he wanted. But to describe him as corrupt, as some of his critics have, is cynical and wrong.
He took loans from friends when he was separated from his wife. Ahern said there was no quid pro quo, and I believe him. He didn't live the high life. His idea of a big night out is a few jars at Fagan's, his Northside local.
We Irish are a curious tribe. We like nothing better than to build someone up to knock them down. It is called begrudgery and Bono defined it thusly: When an American sees a guy in a nice car, he says, "I'm gonna get one of those." When an Irishman sees a guy in a nice car, he says, "I'm gonna get him."
His sloppy finances will be a footnote to Ahern's political history, and history itself will take a more measured view, and he will be remembered well.
He will be remembered not even primarily as the taoiseach who presided over Ireland's stunning reversal of economic fortunes. Years from now, when all of us are dead, Bertie Ahern will be remembered as the taoiseach who presided over the end of the Troubles, Ireland's uncivil war.
The peace process in Northern Ireland was bigger than any individual, but Ahern did as much as anybody to make it work.
He was especially good at persuading Protestant unionists who want to remain British that they had nothing to fear from closer ties to the Catholic south.
He was able to do this because, rare among politicians, what you see with Bertie is what you get.
Ulster Prods pride themselves on talking straight, and Bertie was straight with them.
It is a great irony that unionists came to like and trust him more than they did Tony Blair, who was prime minister of the nation to which they swear undying fealty.
Ten years ago, on the day he buried his mother, Ahern flew to Belfast in the morning, went back to Dublin for the funeral, then right back to Belfast because the peace talks were at a critical juncture.
It was more than diplomacy. It was heroic.
That most unyielding of unionists, Enoch Powell, once said all political lives end in failure. He was only half right, because in political lives well lived, there is an afterlife, a legacy.
Bertie Ahern's legacy is better lives for millions of people.
"Do not underestimate the good you have done," he told Congress. "Do not forget the legacy you have forged. And if ever you doubt America's place in the world or hesitate about your power to influence events for the better, look to Ireland."
As they'd say on the Northside, where the H's are silent but nobody else is, "T'anks, Bertie. T'anks for everyt'ing."
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com
