So John Hume has ended the suspense and spoken to the nation. He led the parties a merry dance. I can't help but wonder: if the leaders of all the political parties had spoken to him would his decision have been different?
It seems to me now it's all very clear-cut. The people will have their say. Will they again vote for a woman or will the Aras return to being a male preserve? Will they elect a relatively youthful candidate (that is, of course, if the political parties give them that option) or will we see an older President than we've been used to for seven years? Will they be offered each party's best option or simply what's available and eager?
It's not hard to be eager for this particular job, as I found out when I had two indirect approaches from the Fianna Fail hierarchy and one direct discussion, all during June and July. When a significant number of former colleagues telephone you encouraging you to seek the nomination and assuring you of their active support, it's hard not be flattered, and interested.
For me, however, reality set in within days. Cutting through the warm glow of possibility was the question: did I really want to be President. `No' was the honest answer. Give up the freedom of the past few months? The freedom to be just me rather than the representative of a party? The freedom to speak for me rather than starting from the party position? The freedom to go where I want when I want rather than have my days sliced up by others?
The possibility of losing those freedoms was bad enough, but much worse for an election-hater like me was the thought of going around the country as if I were running for the Seanad, ticking off the Yeses and Noes from members of the parliamentary party, in order to secure the nomination.
I wouldn't do that, I said. You wouldn't have to, I was told. The party leader could persuade the parliamentary party to come to a unanimous decision to select me. Given that Albert Reynolds had already declared his interest and claimed that the leader had personally endorsed his candidature, that wasn't likely. But I had been handed a civil way out.
"I'm not going to compete against Albert. Or anybody else," I said. "Without comparing, without canvassing, there's no way I could become a unanimous selection. Not in the real world".
Nonetheless, within days I found myself being loosely introduced at public gatherings and TV programmes as the future president. The party had nothing to do with it and neither had I. It was the silly season, and until the McCracken report was published, the Presidency was the nearest thing to a story. My campaign, I read in the papers, was well under way, although I'd have great difficulty being elected since I had got out of politics to avoid media intrusion. (Not so, I dealt with that issue in last week's column.) The Examiner maddened me by stating that I was spending half my life in Leinster House canvassing former colleagues. On impulse I rang the journalist to prove to him that I'd been in Leinster House precisely once in the previous three weeks and could prove that I hadn't asked one single TD or senator for help in a campaign I wasn't running.
He listened, printed what I said the following day and then - with an air of coming up with the trump card - added that I had sent letters of congratulations to successful Fianna Fail candidates, and was therefore definitely in the running. Think of a thesis and look for the evidence to support it seemed to be the approach.
Some commentators didn't even look for evidence. One columnist, Jonathan Philbin Bowman, named a PR person who, he said, was acting as my spokesperson. This particular consultant, as far as I know, has never acted as spokesperson for anybody, isn't employed by me and wasn't in the country at the time, but the piece was so entertaining I wished it was all true.
On holiday in Spain, and courtesy of the Astra satellite and TV, I heard Dana being interviewed on every second radio programme and learned that Brendan O'Carroll had announced he was in for it, too. I turned off the TV and went back to my escapist best-seller with the thought that the big political parties had, one and all, made a dog's dinner out of the issue and, in the process, done neither the office nor the selection process any honour. And you're not doing that process any favour either, said a little voice called conscience. There's no law that says you must declare your every intention to the nation the first time you're asked. You're a private citizen. But the lack of a declaration from this point on will make you complicit in bringing the process of selection candidates for the Presidency into disrepute.
Here, then, is the declaration: I don't want the job. I never have wanted it. As redefined by Mary Robinson, it looks a wonderful challenge. As redefined by Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing, Everest seemed like a wonderful challenge, too, but there are a lot frozen corpses on that mountain, people who thought they had it in them to emulate their heroes, and countless survivors who made it to the top and to anonymity, simultaneously. It may be that the Mary Robinson Presidency was not a precedent but a splendid exception.
That splendid exception provides a yardstick for constant comparison and criticism of the new incumbent, especially if the new president is a woman. But that wouldn't scare me off. What would scare me off is the fact that the president can do nothing measurable. She or he can do consciousness-raising, can raise awareness, focus attention on particular issues. If you've been a legislator, working to change the laws by which people live, setting out to affect and facilitate aspects of their daily lives, you get hooked on the specific. Unless you're close to retirement age, at which point you may be comfortable to spend a few years making appeals to people's better nature.
I wouldn't want the job. And, as a voter, I wouldn't want me for the job: the post requires more passivity and patience than I could ever muster. It requires that the political parties select and offer us their best, and ensure that no individual trivialises or cheapens the Presidency in their campaign for either selection or election.
As I write, Fianna Fail's parliamentary party is getting ready to choose between a TD who would die for the post, a TD who wants the post, and a former TD who could be persuaded to run as a compromise candidate if it would unite the party. Fine Gael is choosing between two women who, in background and personality, could not be in greater contrast to each other. The Labour Party is playing games.
The admixture of ambition, aggression, conflict, confusion, caricatures, singers and comedians does not seem likely to produce a president of stature of whom the nation can be proud. But the great wonder of the democratic process is its capacity to do precisely that.