A candidate may lose, but the consultant always wins

During this presidential election, the thing to be is a consultant. If your candidate wins, you get to write a book telling how you invented her or him. If your candidate loses, you go on radio programmes explaining that it was due to smear campaigns or the vagaries of the PR system.

During the campaign, you tinker with the grooming and body language of another adult, not to mention putting words into their mouth. If they balk, the consultant can follow the precedent set during the Dole v Clinton contest, when consultants whose speeches Dole did not faithfully read aloud leaked their outrage to the media.

Therein lies the paradox of candidate-polishing. It frequently sets out to eradicate the characteristics which first led to the candidate's selection.

For example, if I were consultant to the McAleese campaign, I would be aware that McAleese's quick mind and lucid argumentation counted, for many voters, as major qualifications for the Presidency. None the less, I would minimise the Fianna Fail candidate's talking during the election, because those qualifications are also disqualifications.

Mary McAleese can win the Presidency if her "dislikeability factor" is tightly controlled. This factor is evident when in interviews she argues like a lawyer, forgetting that to win a point is not to persuade a floating voter and to squelch an opponent may do her more damage.

To point out that someone else is in the wrong is not to establish that one is in the right. Take, for instance, her correction, live on the air, of an interviewer's pronunciation of a word more often encountered in print than in speech.

In addition to minimising the speaking, I would abolish bridges and tapestries as an element in it. A recurring problem in the political campaigns of large parties is that they can be influenced by the last big successful campaign in Britain or the US. The McAleese campaign is self-evidently influenced by the Clinton-camp approach last time around, and the use of his "bridge to the 21st century" theme is possibly counterproductive.

The emphasis on North-South may be worthy, but fails to catch the imagination of Southerners not a whit abashed about saying they don't like the northern accents in this campaign.

Although it is expected that a consultant should tinker with the wardrobe of the candidate, I saw nothing wrong with Mary McAleese's wardrobe before her nomination. I see a lot wrong with the new one, however. The head-to-toe photographs in full colour in Magill make her look like a garda recently promoted to superintendent rank. "Stolid" doesn't begin to summarise the impression.

You expect a bubble over her head saying: "Move along there, move along." This is dressing for defence - and it doesn't suit her.

As for Adi Roche, my initial advice would have been a version of the apocryphal street directions: "If I was going there, I wouldn't start from here."

I would have told this marvellous woman that, since her charity is 90 per cent dependent upon her personality and relentless drive, even the most efficient replacement would have a hard time developing it the way Roche could develop it in the coming years.

I would also have told her that the Labour Party selection of her was predicated on the assumption that she'd be compared directly and to his detriment with Albert Reynolds, and that this direct juxtaposition might not (and, as it turned out, did not) happen.

Finally, I would have said: "Adi, Dick Spring is the political equivalent of a corporate headhunter. He doesn't promote from within. If the head he hunts does well, he basks. If it doesn't go well, hunted heads are soon forgotten - like Orla Guerin."

If she stayed with her decision, I would then take her to the best presentation and media skills trainers I could find. I would tell them that while this young woman is used to responding at jet speed and with electric passion to any query on her subject - and her subject has been that ultimate sympathy-puller, sick children - she will now be talking about a subject she does not own and for which these skills are not appropriate.

It is easy for any consultant, and particularly easy for a hypothetical one like me, to be wise after the meltdown caused by the accusations of Adi Roche's former workers. Although it was the day before the stories broke that my antennae went up.

There was Fergus Finlay, all measured monotone and perfect poise, on RTE's Saturday View, announcing that it wasn't Adi's niceness or compassion that attracted him, it was her toughness. A spin, I thought, without knowing the rationale behind the spin, although this became clear the next day. Finlay had been preparing the ground to make "Adi as Stalin" acceptable.

The problem with that approach, and with the revelations of the following week, is that its party political flavour contradicts the simplicity which is Adi Roche's strongest suit.

As a consultant to Mary Banotti, I would focus on letting the public see as often as possible what is attractive about her: her unaffected enthusiasms, her eagerness to be helpful, her complete lack of cynicism. To do that, I would ban "head girl" statements on what the campaign should or shouldn't be about.

Announcing that the election isn't a beauty contest and shouldn't be full of fluff is bad enough. (The minute someone in Ireland says something isn't a beauty contest, the public begins to pay more attention to appearances.) But calling for "robust debate" is plain silly.

THIS is a limited, constrained figurehead role where, for the next seven years, the holder is expressly forbidden to engage in robust debate with anybody. So demanding the candidates prove they have talents they then can't use is daft.

The last piece of advice I would give Mary would be from JFK's rule that nothing should ever be put on the candidate's head. Kennedy would never don a hard hat at a building site. And he was right.

Not only that, nothing unphotogenic (like wellington boots) should go on their feet, either.

Now to Dana. Given my liberal views, the chances that I would ever be allowed within singing distance of Rosemary Scallon's campaign are small. So what I would have to send her is a short note, which would go like this:

"You have almost no chance of winning. But you have a real chance of being the catalyst for debate: the candidate who provokes re-examination of some pretty smug national assumptions. If you're going to achieve that, stop preaching to the converted. Stop visiting hospitals. In fact, cut back radically on your touring, because it's fooling you."

Derek Nally has an advantage, not only in being the late arrival, but as a contrast to the other four. In marketing terms, he is the "uncola".

I would advise him to tell the story of Victim Support and his connection with it, so that people are clear on the different phases of his career.

I would also suggest that he bring realism to discussions on the Presidency, which has been subject recently to overblown claims. And that he does not become guarded and cautious.

Nally is a vigorous, straightforward, likeable man. Striving for safety will drain away that key asset.