Compared to the 17 per cent for Austin Currie in 1990, Ms Mary Banotti's 29.3 per cent of the first-preference vote is a good result for Fine Gael. But for many in her campaign and within the party this is seen as an opportunity missed, and one that was squandered with the help of the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton.
Ms Banotti's campaign director, Mr Phil Hogan, conceded yesterday that Mr Bruton's intervention in the campaign had consolidated Fianna Fail support for Mrs Mary McAleese. A Fine Gael backbencher put it more bluntly: "Bruton blew this. He completely misjudged it and lost the election for her."
Yet it is no disaster for the party. Ms Mary Banotti was first seen as having an uphill struggle to get ahead of Ms Adi Roche. Then she was seen as having little chance of catching Mrs McAleese. In the end, her vote was highly respectable.
Two weeks ago Ms Banotti was still within striking distance of Mrs McAleese in the opinion polls, and her campaign really believed she could take the Presidency. An Irish Times/MRBI opinion poll showed Mrs McAleese with 32 per cent, Ms Banotti with 24 per cent, 27 per cent planning to vote for others and 17 per cent undecided.
A small movement her way would have given Ms Banotti a real chance. But that was before the campaign suggesting Mrs McAleese was soft on Sinn Fein/ IRA got under way. John Bruton did not start this bandwagon rolling, but he jumped on to it.
Mr Bruton has been at pains to insist that he did not use the leaked memos from the Department of Foreign Affairs concerning Mrs McAleese to seek political advantage. It is true that he did not seize on them, as others did, to suggest Mrs McAleese had morally dubious views on the North.
But he quickly found a way to join in the chorus of innuendo. When Mr Gerry Adams, in response to a question, said he would "probably" vote for Mrs McAleese if he had a vote, Mr Bruton found this a "disturbing development".
If Mrs McAleese was elected she would be "a Sinn Fein-endorsed president", said Mr Bruton, and he challenged Mr Ahern and Ms Harney to say whether they were happy about this. Her election would "render impotent the role of the Presidency as a symbol of reconciliation between the unionist and nationalist communities which was so effectively developed by President Robinson."
The same day Eoghan Harris, Mr Bruton's friend and informal adviser, was on radio calling Mrs McAleese "a particularly extreme Northern nationalist. . .a tribal timebomb" and potentially a "very dangerous and tribal president".
The next day Mr Noel Dempsey of Fianna Fail revealed that Messrs Bruton and Harris, together with another of Mr Bruton's advisers, Mr Roy Dooney, had been seen lunching together the previous week. Both men insisted that they had not discussed the presidential campaign, but in the public mind it helped place Mr Bruton at the heart of the attempt to smear Mrs McAleese.
Mr Bruton's strategy appears to have been to win back the 20 per cent of Fine Gael voters who were, according to the polls, going to vote for Mrs McAleese. The effect, however, was to galvanise the Fianna Fail organisation, the party's core vote and those who objected to the smear campaign into supporting Mrs McAleese.
It was, in effect, a rerun of the different approaches towards Northern Ireland articulated by Mr Bruton and Mr Ahern in advance of the June general election. Mr Bruton's thesis was that the Government must not display particular political affinity with the nationalist cause, but should strive in an even-handed way to reach an accommodation between nationalists and unionists. Mr Ahern's view was that the Government's primary role was to defend and advance the position of Northern nationalists.
The divide was effectively the same in the recent campaign. Mr Bruton appeared to be saying that putting a Northern nationalist in the Aras was a partisan, and therefore a bad, thing.