Last year was a dreadful year for arrogance and a wonderful year for truth. Let's start at home with Thomas "Slab" Murphy and with Charlie Haughey.
Mr Murphy, a very senior member of the IRA, had for many years bolstered his already healthy finances by suing or threatening to sue for libel anyone who suggested he was a prosperous smuggler or even a foot-soldier in the IRA.
Since our libel laws seem expressly designed to protect scoundrels and liars from investigative journalists, Murphy and his ilk are usually paid off quietly, but his arrogance was such that even when the Sunday Times decided to take him on, he went ahead and lost his case. Murphy was outraged and devastated as, no doubt, were several other dubious characters who had been waiting to see the outcome before proceeding with their own libel writs. In a Dublin court, neither intimidation nor a foolish law had prevented the triumph of simple truth.
Like Murphy, Charlie Haughey believed himself to be above the law. Like Murphy, Haughey's arrogance had fed on the knowledge that though literally thousands of people knew he was up to his neck in shady financial dealings, the press was afraid to pursue him. And like Murphy, that arrogance brought him low.
Even though his smart lawyers have won him a respite, it is only a respite and his reputation is in tatters. As with Murphy, Haughey's misfortune is of huge benefit to society as a whole. What has happened to Haughey and to Michael Lowry and to Ray Burke has put the frighteners on all those politicians - local and national - who thought that only mugs refused bribes and paid their taxes.
Bill Clinton has been through hell, too, and for the same reasons. Throughout his political career, with the help of lies and intimidation, he has emerged smiling from countless scrapes. Small wonder that his arrogance eventually triumphed over his guile and he refused to tell the truth and say he was sorry.
Though the Clintons are trying to blame Republican malice for his impeachment, it is an allegation which doesn't bear scrutiny: there was a serious moral debate among members of the House of Representatives.
Even if Clinton continues to put his own well-being ahead of that of his country and his party and stays stubbornly in the Oval Office, and even if Congress does not evict him, the message has once again gone out to the American body politic that the most powerful man in the world is subject to the same law as his fellow-citizens.
In the United Kingdom, we have been witnessing the humiliation of a whole government. Labour swept into power already full of hubris: the beautiful people were replacing a bunch of clapped-out, sleazy incompetents.
The spin-doctors manipulated, mesmerised and bullied and, for the first 18 months in office, ministers got away with mistakes and scandals which would have been devastating for their predecessors.
Robin Cook, so brilliant in Opposition, was not only an accident-prone Foreign Secretary, but he ditched his loyal and long-suffering wife for his mistress. Now sidelined and spun-against, he lurks in the shadows fearfully awaiting the imminent publication of Margaret Cook's tell-all memoirs.
There were the revelations in the biography of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, that he had never forgiven Tony Blair for shafting him over the Labour leadership. There was poor old Ron Davies, ruined by the escapade on Clapham Common, and there was the constant stream of allegations of financial irregularity made against the Treasury Minister, Geoffrey Robinson. What makes the Peter Mandelson debacle so much more important is that - largely because of his own relentless self-promotion - he is perceived as the architect and indeed as the epitome of modernising, tough, innovative new Labour. Yet in many respects he symbolises all that is repellent in that movement - the social climbing, the preoccupation with style rather than content and, above all, the arrogance. Mandelson did not think the normal rules applied to him.
His downfall has done wonders for the health of British politics, for it is the beginning of the end for the partisan and parasitical spin-doctors and aides who infest new Labour and feed off inter-ministerial rivalries and resentments.
Next in the media's sights is Charlie Whelan, Gordon Brown's press officer, widely suspected of having leaked the information on Mandelson's loan. They are also smacking their lips over the prospect of bagging Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's press spokesman. In Britain, as in Ireland and America, it's been a great year for those old-fashioned virtues of honesty and humility.
I can't end this column without mentioning Northern Ireland, so here's my wish list for 1999. First, I'd like to see all those who care about human rights confronting the horror that is life in the paramilitary ghettos and holding to account the likes of Gerry Adams, David Ervine and Gary McMichael.
Second, I'd like to see Tony Blair and Bill Clinton applying to the weapons of paramilitaries the same zero tolerance as they have to those of Saddam Hussein - and before An Phoblacht accuses me of wanting republicans banned, let me make it clear that my modest aim is to stop republicans bombing - which of course goes for their equally nasty loyalist counterparts.
Third, I'd like to see John Hume strengthen Seamus Mallon by handing over to him the party leadership. Before anyone points out that the leadership is not in Hume's gift, let me remind them that we're talking about the SDLP.
Fourth, I'd like the Orange Order to get some sense and stop playing a stupid game according to a rule book written by its worst enemies.
Fifth, please, please, please, on behalf of all of us who have been following Northern Irish politics for years and years, will John Hume write a new speech in time for the millennium?