What we'll be doing next week, though you might not have guessed it from much of the coverage, is choosing a President: someone to fill a not very powerful, but important, office as head of this State.
Precisely because it has nothing to do with profit and loss, whom we elect - and why we elect her or him - tells us more about how we see ourselves, and would like to be seen in the wider world, than the choice of any other office-holder.
So the significance of what we do on Thursday will be out of all proportion to the strictly limited powers of the office; whatever the results - and the latest Irish Times/MRBI poll has the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael candidates in close contention - the level of public interest reflects the growth in the influence of the Presidency during the Robinson years.
Some commentators believe the campaign has been shaped by the candidature of Mary McAleese and the subsequent emphasis on Northern affairs. The editor of the Irish News, with the support of senior commentators in Dublin, asks pointedly what message the Republic would send to Northern nationalists if, as another writer put it, "we refuse to elect her". This is not just pointed: it sounds perilously close to political blackmail.
The North is a significant issue in the election, and its significance has been heightened by Prof McAleese's candidature and the events which followed, in particular the clear support of Gerry Adams and the leaking of Foreign Affairs reports which referred to her views on the state of the nationalist parties in the North.
To date the fury of Ms McAleese's supporters has been directed at the leakers, and much commentary has focused on the views attributed to her, which ranged from the predictable to the innocuous. Fianna Fail representatives and several commentators, North and South, have been acting as if they knew, beyond yea or nay, where the papers came from.
Two Ministers, Noel Dempsey and Mary O'Rourke, in separate interviews on RTE Radio One this week, accused their opponents of treason, while hinting strongly that they knew - and their audiences were bound to know - whom they were talking about.
At an election meeting in Ennis on Tuesday, the chairman of Clare County Council, P.J. Kelly, returned to another old theme: "There will always be a certain amount of West Brits in the country who will certainly prefer not to see anybody Irish holding an Irish position," he said, according to the Clare Champion.
Ms McAleese spoke of those "who attempted very maliciously, with malintent, to insinuate that I had ever supported Sinn Fein", and said of the allegations: "I think most people have worked out both their source and the circumstance in which they came into the public domain."
But, in spite of the claims of Fianna Failers and commentators, John Bruton - the politician most consistently accused by them - did not comment on Gerry Adams's support of Ms McAleese until Mr Adams himself announced his preference on radio.
And, as far as I can discover from a search of notes and clippings, Mr Bruton's only comment on the leaks which Mr Dempsey and Mrs O'Rourke call treasonable was to condemn them.
No more than a fortnight ago, that champion of free speech, Noel Dempsey, was among those calling on all and sundry to "await due process" in Ray Burke's case.
Now Mr Dempsey and friends behave as if the Garda inquiry into the leaks, as announced by Bertie Ahern, is no more than a matter of form from which results should not be expected. Why worry when everyone from the candidate up and down knows who's responsible. We'll have no truck with due process here.
As for the FF claim that Mr Adams's support for a potential president is the same as support from any other politician, this is not only nonsensical but dangerous as well.
Sinn Fein has been intent on building a pan-nationalist front for a long time. It's not a conspiracy: the ambition is no secret and the reasons behind it are clear. Not only would a pan-nationalist front strengthen Sinn Fein's hand, it would place the party and the IRA in a position of leadership.
Being able to say that the President of Ireland had been elected with the help of Mr Adams and the support of his supporters, on his say-so, would be a feather in his cap and a powerful symbolic link in the chain that would hold a nationalist front together. In any event, it would allow Mr Adams to remain a brooding presence at the heart of public life of this State.
The leaks, whatever their contents, showed a callous indifference to the painstaking work of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the courage of those who help its officials, as Ms McAleese did, by speaking their minds.
But the North is one of many serious issues being discussed, albeit in a desultory way, in and around an election which, some said, was too tame before the debate on the North began and has been too partisan since.
This, after all, is not a referendum on Northern policy, as some would have it; indeed, her brand of nationalism - and how it might differ from that of equally genuine, though less battle-hardened nationalists in the Republic - isn't the only element of Ms McAleese's politics which merits attention.
Many in this State were familiar with her convictions on social affairs and church-State relations before they became aware of her nationalism. Mary Banotti, who has declared herself a liberal, arrived with a record of unambiguous support for progressive causes in the European Parliament and reform in the referendums of the 1980s and 1990s.
Adi Roche, who has said she is not a nationalist and, like Mary Banotti, lays considerable emphasis on Ireland's role in international affairs, speaks eloquently of her fear that a conservative Presidency would roll back the achievements of the Robinson years.
Derek Nally, who might have been expected to take a harsh view of social affairs, comes close to the British Labour Party's line - tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime - and speaks, like John Lonergan, the governor of Mountjoy, about those city streets and the families destined from the beginning to fill the city's jails.
Dana Rosemary Scallon has never made any secret of her fears for the traditional values which, she's convinced, once held family life and Irish society together. Her suspicion of the media and the part they played in promoting what has come to be called the liberal agenda is obvious.
How Ms McAleese might have changed since she was part of the Hierarchy's delegation to the New Ireland Forum is far from clear.
The dog that doesn't bark is always worth watching. And in this campaign the forces which had been expected to emerge on Dana's side - the cultural defenders - have been unusually, from a liberal point of view, ominously quiet. Perhaps because the candidate of their choice is ahead.