Dana's wit never left her. As she arrived at Dublin Castle last night for the first count, she joked: "I may not be a president, but I am a precedent."
But she had a serious message, too. "There has to be a rethink among the politicians here. There is a wide range of people who feel they do not have a political voice," she said in the dozens of media interviews into which she was plunged.
So what is she going to do about it? At the moment, she says she doesn't know. But both she and her husband Damien Scallon have said many times during the campaign they always wanted to come back to Ireland. She has also said she has been asked to contest other elections, and in a number of constituencies yesterday she came close to a quota.
She says her children are in the middle of a school year in Alabama, and have a home there. She also wants to talk to her family and close friends about the future.
But she told The Irish Times she was not sure her job in the EWTN television network was still there to go back to. "I don't know if that door's still open," she said. EWTN is a religious, not a political, station, and, she said, "it turned out to be a very political campaign."
While she is not clear about a precise role in Irish politics, that she will have a role is not in doubt. "There's been a tremendous image change in Ireland. But there's a desire that anything that doesn't fit the new image gets jettisoned. There's an awful lot of people under the carpet and they realise they're under the carpet."
In the course of her campaign she referred repeatedly both to those who upheld religious and family values, and to those who were not enjoying the rewards of the Celtic Tiger economy. But there are already two parties in the State claiming to reflect the former, and the poor may not care all that much about traditional values.
"I am a unifying force," she said. "Not just of people who share my Christian beliefs, but even for those who don't share them. Why? I don't demand conformity. Unity is not conformity. Unity is mutual respect."
There was no doubt that she had earned respect and affection from all sides in the the campaign. She arrived at the banqueting hall just before Mary Banotti, who kissed her and said: "Well done, warmest congratulations." Tanya Banotti added: "You did great, and you had a sense of humour."
Some of Dana's own supporters had a less worldly view of her campaign. "Our Lord wanted you to do what you did," said one.
Her claim that she had support from people of all political backgrounds was clearly true. "We'll run you in Limerick East," shouted a young man with a McAleese badge, and a Banotti supporter told her one of their canvassers had voted for her. "We have too many of those so-called liberals," he hissed.