EU: Which part of No does Bertie Ahern not understand? Or to put it another way, which part of No does he want the rest of us to understand?
The problem with being dubbed "the most cunning, the most ruthless, the most brilliant of them all" is that people sometimes have trouble taking what you say at face value. Take the Taoiseach's arrival at the summit in Brussels yesterday.
Reporters descended upon him like a plague of locusts, only one question buzzing through their minds. Do you want the job?/Are you in for it?/Will you accept it if it comes your way?
Stoutly, in that Bertie way that we all know, he replied: "I've answered that question a million times."
So what's the answer then? "No!" Sitting around afterwards, the journalists parsed and analysed the two-lettered monosyllable. Did he mean No as in, "No, I don't want the job", or was it No as in, "No I don't want it, but I'll take it if there's nobody else", or maybe, "No, not at the moment, but all this could change between soup and dessert at the European leaders' dinner tonight."
Bertie Ahern gives nothing away. He is the Great Sphinx of Drumcondra and, when a sphinx says No, he isn't really declaring a negative, he is setting you another riddle.
Word was going around that Enda Kenny had half-mischievously backed an Irish president for the Commission but his name was John Bruton.
A more serious contender was Chris Patten, regarded as half-Irish despite his English Tory background.
But as the Euro bosses tucked their napkins under their chins and dallied over the wine list, the front runner was still the Belgian Prime Minister and Elton John lookalike, Guy Verhofstadt. This was the name Bertie Ahern was expected to urge upon his peers.
However, as the evening rain fell on Brussels, so, too, were the clouds darkening over Verhofstadt's name. V for Victory? Don't think so, the sceptics were saying. Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi would give him the thumbs down, people said.
Could Bertie swing it for his Belgian colleague? Or would he blow the whistle for a replay under the new Dutch presidency in a few weeks' time?
Meanwhile, nobody was talking about the constitutional treaty for Europe. The Taoiseach was a victim of his own success.
He had traipsed the length and breadth of the continent to clean up the mess left by the Italians last December.
One reporter called him "the negotiator's negotiator" and, sure enough, the skills acquired through all those years of glad-handing Liberty Hall trade unionists and schmoozing with the employers' side were now paying off for his European brothers and sisters.
Barring a last-minute rush of blood to the head on the part of a major member-state, the treaty seemed to be in the bag. But this issue had no sex appeal compared with the presidency. A vacant job, a competition to fill it, a bit of politicking and bargaining in smoke-filled rooms, all this was much more exciting than a single document translating all those obscure European texts into a semblance of plain English.
The Taoiseach and Brian Cowen came in to tell the media the good news about all the progress they were making. But they were like mums and dads offering children meat and potatoes when all the kids wanted was ice-cream.
The Taoiseach got through the press conference without having to reveal the name of his favoured candidate.
The only glitch was when Eoin Ó Murchú of Raidió na Gaeltachta asked a question in Irish, about the status of Irish in the EU, but, tellingly, no translation was provided to the world's media. Oh, the shame of it! Luckily Brian Cowen was on hand for a bit of impromptu interpreting.
When the dinner was over we would all be much wiser, or maybe not. Would Verhofstadt emerge, smiling that toothy Belgian grin, would it be Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, or the Danish dark horse, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, or would the issue be handed on to the Dutch presidency for resolution?
The Taoiseach wasn't saying much.
Apart from No, of course.