The Taoiseach can stand first among this generation of political leaders today for the personal negotiating skills and political judgment which he brought to the production of the Irish-British agreement.
Mr Ahern can stand shoulder to shoulder with Liam Cosgrave who signed the breathtaking, albeit doomed, Sunningdale Agreement in 1972; with Garret FitzGerald who won the first Irish foothold in Northern Ireland with the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985; with Albert Reynolds who negotiated the Downing Street Declaration in 1993 to formally begin the peace process; and, last but not least, with Albert Reynolds, John Bruton and Dick Spring who produced the Frameworks Document in 1995 setting out the parameters for yesterday's historic settlement.
It wasn't always clear in the latter stages of the negotiations, however, that Mr Ahern would earn such kudos for his accomplishment. The consensus man took very high political risks to win his place in the history books this Easter.
There were many in Fianna Fail, hand up to mouth, who questioned the Taoiseach's wisdom in placing his cards on Articles 2 and 3 on the table many weeks ago. Not alone did he offer to remove the territorial claim to the North from the Constitution and replace it with the principle of consent, but he gave the Ulster Unionist Party access to the Government's legal advices.
He, knowingly, took such a dramatic step to kick-start the Stormont negotiations at a time when he was receiving no hard evidence that Mr David Trimble would cut a deal.
Mr Ahern took the biggest risks, however, in the closeted, high-profile negotiations with Mr Blair and Mr Trimble over the last 10 days. It suddenly struck him that "the consensus man" could be asked to split the difference, like a trade union negotiator that he is, to meet Senator George Mitchell's deadline. That realisation dawned when it became apparent that Mr Mitchell intended to act as broker between the British and Irish governments on the North-South bodies early last week.
That development converged with the British Prime Minister's personal paper on the North-South dimension of the agreement which arrived on Mr Ahern's desk last Tuesday week.
Knowing there were large-scale disagreements between himself and Mr Blair on the key Irish component of the agreement, the Taoiseach surprised many observers when he put down public markers for Mr Blair on the way to the key summit meeting in 10 Downing Street on Wednesday night. Mr Ahern's judgment, at that stage, was that he had nothing to lose. He had already made up his mind that no agreement was better than a bad agreement. It was time for Mr Blair and Mr Trimble to engage in political realities.
The dire warnings worked to calm the Fianna Fail heartland at home about Articles 2 and 3 and to achieve the direct engagement of Mr Blair in bottom-line negotiations. Last Sunday the two leaders produced a joint paper on NorthSouth bodies for Senator Mitchell, albeit with square brackets to indicate further unresolved difficulties.
With the benefit of hindsight, the biggest question about Mr Ahern's negotiating strategy can be raised at this juncture. And, unfortunately, it cannot yet be answered authoritatively. Did Mr Ahern and Mr Blair deliberately set an artificially high target for the scope and structure of the North-South ministerial council and implementation bodies to shock Mr Trimble into engagement at that point? If they did, the strategy succeeded.
Mr Ahern demonstrated the greatest judgment, in the end, to be able to do a deal which brought Mr Trimble on board without Sinn Fein falling off the edge. It was as close a call as it was informed. He could not have sold the agreement without Sinn Fein.
Fairly or unfairly, because of the "people power" of the new agreement, the inclusivity of the negotiating process and the potential for peace, Mr Ahern will be perceived to have accomplished more for nationalist aspirations in Northern Ireland than any of his immediate predecessors. He has, finally, after 21 years in politics, passed the hardest possible gravitas test.