We were happy to dismiss her as a joke, an anomaly, a politically naive chancer. And then we went and elected Dana Rosemary Scallon to the European Parliament. I talked to a lot of people, including business and professional people, around the Connacht/Ulster constituency over the last week and the same phrase kept cropping up. `Yeah, I gave her a number one (or two), but I never expected her to win." This was coming from voters of every political hue, and given her strictly apolitical stance, we are left with the question of why people voted for her.
It wasn't the policies. She made it clear from the outset of the campaign that she had few detailed policies. Asked about headage payments, she confessed she didn't know a thing about them. In place of in-depth knowledge of the issues, we were treated to the same recurring message - that the people needed someone who could talk for them without having to check with the party HQ before she opened her mouth.
It's not a new idea and is one that has been exploited by a number of Independent TDs over the years. But these TDs at least had a thorough understanding of the problems facing their constituents, or they campaigned on one issue such as the MMDS or hospital closures. They didn't fly in from their home in another continent some weeks before the campaign began armed with little or no information at all.
Normally, a candidate trying a stunt like that would be found out almost before her feet hit the tarmac at Shannon. A pack of journalists would have descended on this exotic prey and devoured her. Two factors prevented that happening.
The first was an unusual timidity. This seems to have its roots in the public reaction to Vincent Browne's evisceration of Dana during the presidential election campaign. That and her skill at turning a negative into a positive. Pat Cox went for her early in the campaign, branding her a political tourist. She turned that into a claim that she was a fine example of the emigrants of the last decade, bravely facing unwelcoming prejudice on their return to swipe a stripe off the Celtic Tiger. Some politicians spotted this, as did the media programme-makers and the editors. They understood that she was still seen as the teenager who, 29 years earlier, won the Eurovision Song Contest, and that the viewers, listeners and readers wouldn't live with her being treated in the same way as the rest of the hard-bitten politicos in the race.
The second factor grew logically out of the first. If the media couldn't expose her as a charming featherweight, they would dismiss her as a laughable nonentity. She got lumped in with Ming the Merciless under the "no-hoper that might produce an interestingly bizarre comment" category. So she ended up getting coverage on the oddest of subjects, everything from genetically modified foods to oil rigs.
And in the process she deployed her most potent asset - humour. She refused to take herself too seriously. Let me drag Pat Cox back by way of contrast. While you may often find yourself agreeing with what he is saying, it can be quite difficult to agree with him. This is because his delivery is shot through with pomposity. With Dana, you might disagree with what she says but it can be very difficult to find her disagreeable. She seems to be devoid of pomp and circumstance. This leaves us with a charming, well-known woman but not a seat winner.
Enter Jesse "The Body" Ventura. He was a professional wrestler in America - that's where the "Body" bit came from. Jesse has confessed, among other things, to using steroids during his wrestling years, and is instantly identifiable by bullet head and ritual grimace. He was recently elected Governor of Minnesota. One of the reasons, according to American commentators, is that voting for him became a self-affirmatory "cool" gesture on the part of younger voters.
Since politics is a joke, goes this thinking, let's get our laughs in first by voting for a candidate who is a joke, a candidate with few relevant credentials, policies or affiliations. That'll show the system what we think of it. Dana Rosemary Scallon was our Jesse Ventura. A chance for the voters to thumb their noses at the political system, in particular the pointless, banana-straightening European Parliament.
Still, nose-thumbing wouldn't have won her the seat on its own. We had disarming non-specific waffle about family values delivered in a softly wistful way by a woman clothed in nostalgia. That, combined with the substantially more hard-line conservative attitude of her supporters, who seemed to imply that she would single-handedly roll back 10 years of liberal "mistakes", got her the votes she needed.
And so the people have spoken, although I'm not entirely sure they got what they wanted. There will, however, be some unexpected outcomes. We will be denied the experience, intelligence and hard work of a Noel Treacy in a European context.
On the other hand, given that the Higher Education Authority will be announcing within weeks a funding injection without precedent into scientific research at third level education, Noel Treacy, as Minister of State for Science, Technology and Commerce, will be in charge of an aspect of government pivotal to Ireland's economic health in the next century, so his loss will undoubtedly be our gain.
As for rolling back the liberal developments in Ireland that Dana has been touted as leading? The reality, of course, is that neither divorce nor gay rights will ever be reversed. But by calling for another referendum on abortion, what Dana's supporters are actually creating is the context for limited abortion in this State.
Contradictory? Absolutely. But valid, none the less. The more an issue like abortion is debated, the more a desensitising process takes hold, so that suggestions which would have been rejected out of hand a few years ago (about, for example, the occasional medical indications for abortion) get wider acceptance. Finally, Fianna Fail has received a clear warning on the hazards of complacency during any campaign. While Noel Treacy worked hard on his campaign, the party-appointed director of elections, Minister of State Eamon O Cuiv, appears to have badly misjudged the situation on the ground. ail organisation in Connacht-Ulster, not to have spent enough time in the constituency directing the campaign. If he had he would surely would have spotted the trend towards Dana. or, at least, would have put some sort of coherent shape on the Fianna Fail campaign. And when problems arose in individual Dail constituencies, as they did, he would have been in a position to sort them out quickly.
The more fundamental reality is this: if the voters had been presented with a clearer definition of the contrast between Noel Treacy and Dana and the importance of the European Parliament to Connacht-Ulster, there is no way they would have chosen a total novice over a skilled, capable and accomplished professional.