Beyond Ireland's shores, Mary Robinson's achievement can be judged by a simple but telling test. Before she took over the office, few outside Ireland could have told you the name of the nation's head of state. After she steps down, few will be able to tell you the name of her eventual successor. But ask at least the averagely informed person in many countries around the world to name Ireland's president for the last past seven years and many of them will be able to do so instantly.
Robinson's achievement, therefore, is a recognition level that the heads of other small states can only dream about. As any marketing person will confirm, such recognition is an asset almost beyond price. In a head of state, it instantly embodies what others think about his or her country. At its best, the transcendent example in the modern world is Nelson Mandela. But, on a less exalted level, Mary Robinson has managed something similar for Ireland. Not since De Valera has an Irish leader had such an international reputation.
Any other comparison with Dev ends there. For the sine qua non of Robinson's success over the past seven years has been her gender. A female president is rare enough anywhere. But a female president of Ireland? And a liberal? And elected too? This is a rare combination anywhere in the modern world, never mind in Ireland.
To outsiders, Robinson immediately articulated and represented a very different image of Ireland and of Irish people from the one defined by the foundation of the state. With- out explicitly dishonouring the past, she has consistently projected a modern Ireland to the world. The old Ireland was steeped in itself, in its history, in its religion and in its difference. The Ireland which she has projected to the world has been more pluralist, forward-looking, secular and convergent.
Different countries have different kinds of modernisers and no single template applies everywhere. But Mary Robinson has been a contemporary of many other modernisers - and not accidentally. She shares the conciliatory, liberal and internationalist impulses of the postwar generation to which she belongs. That is why she deserves to be spoken of in the same context as people like Gorbachev, Gonzalez, Clinton and Blair, because they have all sought instinctively to reconcile their nations with the world rather than to solidify them in opposition to it.
Yet it is Robinson's distinctive achievement to have made people think differently about Ireland. This has been a crucial and generally unremarked ingredient in the redefinition of the British-Irish relationship over the past decade. She may not have played a specific political role in that process, but her very presence as head of state lent credibility to the conciliatory mood between London and Dublin and was therefore part of the chemistry which created the continuing pressure for intelligent new thinking in Northern Ireland. That is a remarkable achievement, and all the more so for having been achieved without obvious confrontation with the old order.
But Mary Robinson has made her impact for two other reasons. First, she has proved that women leaders do not need to be like men. That is, I think, one reason why she has always been so admired in Britain, which is still seared by the experience of Margaret Thatcher. But that effect can be felt far be- yond these islands too. Her reception and reputation in the United States have eclipsed those of her predecessors as effortlessly as they have also done so throughout Europe.
FOR the British, there is a second and even more tantalising achievement. Mary Robinson's example as a modern and effective leader has created a new model of presidentialism which Britain, its monarchy beseiged and confused, can only envy. She has not sought to promote discussion of constitutional reform in Britain, but it is a simple fact that her republican virtues offer a beguiling alternative to a people whose sense of statehood and identity is now so deeply troubled. Whenever conversation turns to the great What if? of the monarchy debate, it is not long before someone mentions Mary Robinson. She has helped to legitimate the possibility that Britain too could be different.
The myths of old Ireland are many, powerful and sometimes bogus. I am conscious too that Mary Robinson may be part of a myth of the new Ireland. She embodies something which may not in fact be as firmly established as the wishful thinking of tributes such as this always tends to imply. Nor even, possibly, as absolutely desirable as it sometimes seems. Ireland is no more the embodiment of every modern virtue or of every civic goal than anywhere else is. It's just that Mary Robinson has sometimes made it seem that way, especially to a Britain which is itself so much in need of change. We've got our own moderniser now. But Mary Robinson has been one of those who showed us the way.
Martin Kettle is Washington correspondent for the Guardian