IF you had walked into Fitzpatrick's Hotel in Manhattan in the past few years, you would have found yourself checking in under the watchful eye of the President.
Not the US President but our own Mary Robinson. Her portrait photograph is about 30 inches high and she is wearing a purple outfit, a gold tore-like necklace and a resolute smile. I can't remember previous presidents being given such prominence in an overseas hotel lobby.
And in a sense that sums up the Robinson Presidency. She redefined the role, which in theory makes succession that much harder. Except that in Ireland, when someone redefines a role, someone else usually comes along and redefines it right back.
Although the selection and the campaign will be overshadowed by the gender, style and visual presence of the incumbent, Mary Robinson's successor is unlikely to find her ghost trailing after them as they visit community groups and receive credentials from new ambassadors.
The Presidency's success may even ease the process of selecting candidates. For the first time, women are being mentioned first when the issue arises, including Gemma Hussey, Mary O'Rourke, Mary Banotti and Adi Roche.
Of these the MEP has one, arguably unfair, advantage. As with Mary Robinson when her candidature was announced, Mary Banotti is relatively less well-known than the TDs or former TDs being considered. While anybody who wants to find a negative about Gemma Hussey or Mary O'Rourke can (in the case of the former) quote from her diaries or (in the case of the latter) recall some aspect of her political personality which may irritate, Mary Banotti is a well-known name in Dublin rather than a household name. She is a recognised figure rather than an immediately identifiable personality.
That was a huge advantage for the Robinson campaign. She was well known but seen as a distant, authoritative and essentially legal figure. As a result she was not campaigning against her image.
Although some effort was made during the campaign to question her values based on the legal cases in which she had been involved, for most people she was a formidable woman who appeared far more accessible than expected. Visually, she was interesting, too, in a way difficult for any TD to achieve, if that TD is male and appears every second night on the television news.
When it comes to running for the Presidency, it is better to be half-known than well- known, as the last contest sadly confirmed.
Brian Lenihan was a wonderfully erudite, analytical and gently witty man in love with the play of ideas, as his occasional book reviews demonstrated.
But for many years before the presidential election Fianna Fail and its leadership had used him as the old reliable to be put before the cameras whenever a crisis happened, secure in the knowledge that he would remain civil, keep talking and hold the party line.
As a result, the general public had a limited, stereotyped perception of him, a perception difficult to dislodge in a short campaign.
Over familiarity is a killer when Ireland goes shopping for a president. The nation does not want a candidate rooted in clientelism who exudes the ready rapport of "the good constituency vote-getter".
Banks may get away with calling some of their staff "relationship managers", but the emotional manipulation implicit in the term is not something citizens want their faces rubbed in when selecting their figurehead.
Instead, the people want someone of dignity and distance. Someone who can unbend when moved by an issue or an individual rather than someone motivated by the need to placate, plamas and please.
We want the best for the Presidency. Never mind that those overseas find them magnificent, that's easy. People overseas are easier to impress then the natives.
We want to be impressed by our president, whether in terms of social ease, competence or depth of thinking. Nice isn't enough.
Nice used to be enough, but the Presidency now requires something more: a strong individual with whom the public has an affinity, but no more than an affinity.
We do not have to share the president's academic qualifications. We do not need to comprehend the nuances of the president's thinking on his/her specialist subjects. But we do want the president to be someone who personifies the best of ourselves.
There is an element of elitism in how citizens interpret the role of president, as opposed to a TD or even minister. Of our president we require a higher level of education and, critically, of social confidence which emerges mostly from a middle-class upbringing.
The fact is that, as we approach the end of the century, we may love the politics of a local public figure who is hardworking and reminds us of the indomitable under- achiever we knew in primary school but we'd prefer to keep them at home.
We don't want such a person put in a position where he or she might address an overseas head of state as if meeting a pal at a cattle mart or a football match.
It is a middle-class prejudice and we shouldn't fool ourselves that we don't have it.
But we want something more in our president. We hope for ideas and intellectual direction. The irony is that we then put the candidate in a constitutional strait jacket which inhibits the president's ability to articulate with any great clarity the Big Ideas
All of this explains why when we cast our minds hack over the speeches the President made during her time in office it is difficult to recall or quote a specific point or aspiration. In retrospect, homogenised by the necessary caution of the role, her speeches are recalled as making generally acceptable statements about the desirability of mutual respect and human rights.
THIS is a problem for an aspirant who has a passion for a specific issue. Thomas Kenneally observed of a group of priests in one of his novels that "because they love nobody, they think they love God". The cruelty of the comment aside, the reference has a relevance for the role of president.
The aspirant who, for example, fears Ireland will become a graffiti-daubed racist maelstrom, with burning petrol soaked rags pushed through the letter boxes of undesirable immigrants, could not hope to have an impact on the issue through the Presidency.
Speeches they might make on the topic would have to be so general as to be impenetrable, except to the leader writers of newspapers. Readers and listeners already convinced would nod and praise and that would be the end of it.
As a minister, you can change the way people live. As a president, you can be perceived to change the context within which people live.
I would go further. The more politically effective you have been, the more difficult you will find the shadowy nuancing involved in the presidential role. Because Mary Robinson was at the outset of her Presidency a highly educated figure tending to be seen as formal and somewhat distant, she could get away with: "I am of Ireland. Come dance with me in Ireland."
A politician who three weeks ago stood outside a church yelling his or her wares a at Mass-goers might have a certain implausibility with the same line.