Only a few more days of this poison and rancour to go; and we might well ask how we got to this pretty pass. Simple. The stakes were once too low, and now they are far, far too high. Mary Robinson turned the office into a stepladder and now we are paying the price.
Is it surprising that the most ambitious and most capable woman in Ireland, Mary McAleese, wants to be the next to put her foot on the bottom rung of the Aras? Does she wish to be President merely to be a good President? Or does she wish to be President because the Presidency is another step towards the international stage, as pioneered by Mary Mark I?
That is the real issue in this election. The Sinn Fein-gambit was a neat little hand grenade for a while, and it did some injury, but the long-term effect of it was to gather more souls solicitously around the intended target. John Hume and Brid Rodgers, who presumably would otherwise have stayed silent, felt it necessary to intervene. As the dust settles, and the ambulance goes wailing back to the hospital, we can see Mary McAleese standing at the scene of the explosion, not even shaken, while the other candidates are making sure she's all right or are in the ambulance, groaning.
Stalinist tactic
The gentlemen who tossed in the Shinner smear - and that was a perfect little Stalinist tactic, with a sticky pedigree all over it - seem to have done more damage to just about everybody else than to Mary McAleese. Throughout she stood tall and unbending, handling herself with the composure of the woman she most resembles, Margaret Thatcher. I was frightened of Mary McAleese before the hand grenade; now I am terrified of her.
She is, like Thatcher, tougher, more able, more single-minded than those around her. No other candidate could have coped so imperturbably with the leaks, and the artfully constructed falsehoods, as she has done. She was rock-steady, giving strength around her when others were failing. She is in a class of her own.
That is why she scares the living daylight out of me. She'll make mincemeat of the elected politicians of Dail Eireann, none of whom come near her in ability or single-mindedness. She has not put herself forward as a President in the amiable-old-duffer mould, an Erskine O Dalaigh, nor even in the mould of the Mary Mark I we saw seven years ago, who - remember? - asked us to dance. That was the presidency as minstrelsy (though it wasn't what we got).
Mary McAleese's visions make me tremble, for before she moves on to a post-presidential post, she will not settle even for the Robinson presidency. She is far more driven and has far more composure than Mary Robinson had. I once saw Mary Robinson break into tears in the Seanad because she missed a debate. Can you imagine Mary McAleese breaking into tears over anything?
Energy and ambitions
Mary McAleese does not want to be President in order to become the lord of the dance. With her ferocious energy and ambitions, she will soon tire of the presidential round, and she will not have the clever hand of Bride Rosney to steer her. The Park will not hold her. She could be a constitutional crisis waiting to happen.
That she is a Northern nationalist per se troubles me not one whit. Northern nationalism needs good strong people to express and represent it, most particularly because it is in a permanently adversarial role with unionists. If the latter are right to defend their identity, and I believe they are, nationalists would be insane not to do the same. I do not grudgingly concede this.
The declaration of identity and the cherishment of the details of that identity are commonplace through the civilised world.
What is not so commonplace is the presence within a small area of two identities, competing and rival - and until recently in a state of war. This doesn't mean that a representative of the Northern nationalist community shouldn't be President. Seamus Mallon, for example, is as brave and tolerant a gentleman as you could wish for, an exemplar of the virtues of the broader Irish nation; if he were President, he would both adorn the office and settle for its limitations.
Impressive and purposeful
But I don't believe Mary McAleese would. I don't even think she can help herself as she strides through life, the earth shaking beneath her feet. She is what she is. She marched into the smugly unionist bastion of Queen's University and before you could say Mary McAl. . . the bastion was in pieces, and unionists were sheltering in the rubble while she turned south, towards the Park, thud, thud, thud. John Alderdice, nice, amiable Alliance John Alderdice already feels threatened by the prospect of her Presidency. How do you think the real unionists feel?
If this were an American or French presidential election, she has the ideal qualifications: intelligence, ambition, charisma. Her eyes flash on the television screen and at home I faint in terror. She is the most impressive, most dynamic and most purposeful person in public life in Ireland. She is simply incomparable.
Which is why she would make a bad President for this Republic.