When it first became known five years ago that Senator Edward Kennedy's sister was interested in becoming US ambassador to Dublin, the immediate reaction was one of polite puzzlement.
Why on earth did she want the job, and what qualifications did she have, even for a posting which had recently been described by one career diplomat in Washington as "small potatoes"?
Profiles hurriedly written from the US described her as a "shy, retiring woman", who had done splendid work for the disabled through the charity foundation Very Special Arts. There was sympathy for the fact that, like all the Kennedys, her life had been scarred by tragedy.
It was suggested that these experiences, together with her own disposition, meant that she would concentrate on the "people" aspect of the job, rather than policy. She was quoted as saying she would be interested in meeting "women's groups", thus branding her firmly as fluffily irrelevant, at least as far as the male establishment was concerned.
As to why she wanted to come to Dublin, one commentator answered that question by writing: "There is prestige attached to being an ambassador and, besides, the post isn't likely to be onerous."
This didn't quite explain why Senator Edward Kennedy should have lobbied President Clinton quite so intensively to get her the job, overcoming the claims of other apparently well-qualified candidates, but this was put down to fraternal affection. Looking back with the benefit of five years' hindsight, this patronising dismissal of the woman herself seems almost incredible.
The first signs that Jean Kennedy Smith was nobody's poodle, least of all the US State Department's, came soon after her arrival when she visited Northern Ireland. It had long been a principle of US policy towards Ireland that the North was the preserve of the embassy in London.
At least one of Mrs Kennedy Smith's predecessors had been reprimanded when he travelled across the Border and told not to repeat the journey.
There were reasons of realpolitik for this prohibition. The State Department's attitude to the conflict in Northern Ireland had been conditioned by its traditional "special" relationship with the British government. There had been some attempts in the past by Irish-American politicians to break through this wall, but on the whole the cosy Anglo-American alliance resisted the efforts to breach it.
With the arrival of President Bill Clinton in the White House, the balance of power had shifted, and the new ambassador knew this. She had visited the North as a private citizen during some of the worst years of the Troubles, staying with John Hume in his house in the Bogside. She believed passionately that the US could and should play a more active role in brokering peace in Ireland, a view which had long been shared by her younger brother, Senator Edward Kennedy.
President Clinton had already expressed a sympathetic interest in Ireland. As a student at Oxford in the late 1960s, he had seen the early civil rights marches on television and been struck by how closely the demonstrators followed what they had learnt from the experience of the US.
During his election campaign he had promised a group of Irish-American politicians that he would do "what he could". He was not impressed by the special relationship between Britain and the US and had good reason to feel a degree of personal mistrust towards the Conservative government, which had authorised a trawl through the record of his time at Oxford.
Mrs Kennedy Smith's arrival in Dublin in 1993 coincided with the period of the Hume-Adams initiative when the government, though by no means all of its opponents, became convinced that there was a real possibility of persuading the IRA to abandon violence. It was an integral part of John Hume's argument to Gerry Adams that the building of a strong nationalist alliance, which would include the exercise of Irish-American influence in the US, could underpin peace and guarantee an eventual settlement.
As Albert Reynolds put it later, "We had to prove to them [the republican movement] that politics worked, that it could work better than violence and produce better results."
It was here that Kennedy Smith was to act as a bridge between the government and Washington.
She made contact with all shades of opinion in the North and was for ever picking the brains of sympathetic observers to ask what she could do "to help things along". The results of these efforts usually found their way to the White House, often by-passing the State Department en route.
Inevitably perhaps, her methods brought her into conflict with some of her colleagues, including members of the embassy staff. Feelings were badly bruised. But her opponents underestimated her steely determination. The worst row came when she lobbied for Gerry Adams to be given a visa to enter the US before the first IRA ceasefire in 1994.
Raymond Seitz, who was American ambassador in London at the time and clearly smarting from her intrusion on his patch, later claimed that she had been duped by Adams and had become "an ardent apologist for the IRA".
There was another Anglo-American rumpus when, after tireless cajoling efforts, she managed to persuade Washington to grant a visa to the IRA veteran Joe Cahill when the republican leadership judged that only he could steady its supporters in the US.
There now began what was to become a familiar pattern. An unnamed source in the State Department would attack Jean Kennedy Smith's gullibility or whatever, and suggest to some sympathetic journalist that she had lost the confidence of the President.
A White House spokesman would rush to her defence saying that, on the contrary, the President had every reason to trust her judgment, a fact borne out by his willingness to take her advice over that of more conventional professional diplomats.
There was, of course, good reason for President Clinton to be well pleased with his ambassador to Dublin. The IRA ceasefire of l994 and the subsequent peace process were to prove one of the great successes of his foreign policy.
His visit to Northern Ireland and the delirious scenes on the streets of Belfast and Derry were a highlight of his first term in office and anchored Northern Ireland firmly in his heart.
Jean Kennedy Smith has always been well able for her critics. She is, after all, a Kennedy and steeped in a lifetime of political skills. "I have an absolute faith in politics and its ability to get things done," she once told an interviewer. She has powerful allies in Washington and is, by all accounts, quite inexorable in the way she uses them.
She has also put a much more human face on the somewhat stiff protocol of diplomatic life. The splendid residence in the Phoenix Park has been thrown open to women's groups (as promised), to community activists from North and South, to writers and musicians, as well as politicians and bigwigs. There have been conferences on how to combat racism, seminars on the media's role in society and dozens of unlikely encounters.
She relished playing a cameo role in Neil Jordan's movie, Michael Collins, and has travelled the country, usually quite unpublicised, to promote local initiatives. One of her recent engagements was to present awards to mothers from both parts of Ireland who care for handicapped children.
But it is for her part in promoting peace and reconciliation, the risks she has been prepared to take, that Jean Kennedy Smith will be remembered as long as the peace process is a subject for historians. Raymond Seitz, perhaps the most virulent of her public critics but by no means the only one, described her in his memoirs as being "too shallow to understand the past, too naive to anticipate the future".
In fact, the most important thing about her time in Dublin was that she recognised that a moment of opportunity for peace existed and did her best, through even the bleakest moments, to nurture and rally support for it.
Today is the Fourth of July. This evening Jean Kennedy Smith will give her last Independence Day Party as US ambassador. There will be an abundance of informal hospitality and fireworks to round off the evening. But for many of the guests, particularly those who have travelled from the North, the gaiety will be tinged with a sense of real personal regret that this most unconventional of diplomats is leaving town.
