When the news of Mary Robinson's election was verified in the United States seven years ago, there was an unusual outpouring of enthusiasm, joy, and support. The first woman President! Of Ireland!

Americans who do not follow Irish events or take an interest in Irish history were puzzled; they thought Irish mothers were still in the kitchen. Those who knew better had their highest hopes realised.

A brilliant, articulate, attractive woman, a woman of serious intent and sincere compassion, would now represent the small country with the big reputation.

I remember I was delivering a lecture the moment the news of her election was announced: a young woman burst into the hall, interrupted the lecture and told us the news. There was an immediate standing ovation.

The news of Mary McAleese's accession to the Presidency was met here with a far more subdued reaction. The thrill of the "first woman President" was, of course, a thing of the past.

The puzzlement among many Americans as to how a person from the North of Ireland could run - and win - the Irish Presidency was apparent. It has taken some days, and some education by the media, to clarify just who Mary McAleese is, why she ran and how she won.

In June 1997, Mrs McAleese spoke to a group of women from Boston at a conference in Belfast City Hall. She "wowed" the women there; indeed, many felt that they had heard a future Irish President speak.

Those who followed the Irish presidential campaign realised quite soon into it that McAleese was a star.

Most Americans do not have the gift for oratory that seems to be in the Irish blood. Those of us who make a passable speech have had to learn how to do it, and even then our words trickle out like a little creek in an arid desert, compared to the floodgates that open with the gush of an Irish verbal attack.

Mary McAleese's talents in front of a crowd, her quickness, her wit, her grasp of issues, and her intelligence, impressed us from the start.

Most Americans I spoke to during the days following Mrs McAleese's victory wished her well, but were eager to learn more about her.

A spokesperson for Senator Edward Kennedy said the senator had sent a letter of congratulations to President-elect McAleese in which he said he admired her "impressive campaign, which was always eloquent and generous", and that he looked forward to working with her.

One of the senator's staffers, who has met Mrs McAleese on several occasions, said: `She is articulate, intelligent, capable and well-qualified to serve as President. As the first Northerner elected to the office, and someone who has also spent a good deal of her life in the South, she will have a good perspective to contribute to her role as President."

The most interesting aspect to all Americans is her Northern roots.

Before this election, the vast majority of Americans would not have realised a citizen from Northern Ireland could be President.

Mr John McManmon, an Irish-American and member of the board of the Irish-American Partnership, identifies himself as "non-political" but said the McAleese election for him meant that Ireland was more interested now in new thinking, and it was encouraging that new people were "invited into the tent."

Dr Gordon Rogoff, a professor in the drama department at Yale in the winter and the co-founder and director of Exiles Theatre in Ireland in the summer, felt the McAleese election verified the wish in Ireland for peaceful co-existence.

"Exiles has been shown a very warm welcome in Coleraine [Co Derry] where we have our summer school," Dr Rogoff said. "I think the fact that the people in the Republic of Ireland wanted . . . and chose . . . a Northerner to represent them puts an end to the feelings of rejection people in the North might feel."

Others, like columnist and awardwinning novelist James Carroll, voice a more subdued warning about her supposedly conservative views on some social issues.

He said: "I confess abject ignorance of her convictions, and her views, whatever they are, have to be respected, but it is crucial that the President of Ireland should not be a traditional theocrat: even the church is trying to move out of that mould.

"Catholic fundamentalism would not be a good road to travel."

Notice has been taken among many Americans of her direct and assertive style.

As an observer and admirer of women in Northern Ireland for a long time, I am a fan of that style. No beating about the bush, no saying one thing and meaning another, no dagger hidden in a charming turn of phrase.

Southerners in the US say about New Englanders: "Oh, they can say the rudest thing and get away with it just because they are from New England", many a Southern lady has lamented, reeling from the impact of a straightforward remark.

The Mary McAleese style will go down well in the US. The impact of her Northern roots, the skills and intellect she brings to the Park, and this most hopeful era in Ireland's history, gives her the opportunity that every Irish public figure has longed for decades: to be there when the peace is real.

Elizabeth Shannon is director of the International Visitors Programme at Boston University. Her late husband, William Shannon, was US Ambassador to Ireland from 1977 to 1981.