I never said that the men, women and children who happen to live on the island of Ireland, north of the political border, are inferior to those who live south of it. How could I? I did propose that there are large differences between the two places, notably in the area of political experience but even more in popular culture. How well Mary McAleese will neutralise the element of antagonism that always attaches to difference remains to be seen. This is one of the many issues already thrown up by the presidential contest so interesting in themselves that the campaign is going to be written about far beyond its merits. The presidential election, after all, isn't particularly important. It isn't anything like as important as what is going on in Stormont. But everyone is talking about it with great relish, whereas no one except a specialist would dream of initiating a conversation about Stormont.
We could have done perfectly well for the next seven years with a conventional President. Indeed, we could even have had one of our crooks up in the Park without coming to any harm: the position is so powerless that there's almost no potential for corruption. But as it is, it is as if the doors of a cupboard have been thrown open to reveal an astonishing collection of national bric-abrac.
Take Derek Nally, for instance. I hadn't fully remembered, until I heard him refer to it on the Vincent Browne radio show, that he has a proud record of drawing the attention of the relevant superiors to scandalous behaviour within the Garda Siochana. He spoke out in connection with alleged brutality, with vindictive treatment of serving officers, and with unlawful telephone-tapping. He brought these grave matters to people at the top of both the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail administrations (and wasn't necessarily thanked for his efforts by either, as far as I can gather). I can think of few more important lines of action. All the presidential candidates except Dana have substantial community service to their credit. But an honourable police force is the very corner-stone of civil liberties, and I'm not at all surprised that Derek Nally should consider himself especially qualified to seek a presidential nomination.
But this brings up a key point about this unique election. It is not about measuring and weighing against each other the actual things the candidates have done and the actual kinds of people they appear to be. The situation is much more complicated than that, and much more unreasonable. We move towards the choice we will make by gaining a feel not just for the candidates' messages but for the personalities that are modifying the messages in the very act of carrying them. Style is very important. And where exactly each candidate fits into things is important. We are beginning to place each candidate in the complex thing inside our heads that is our sense of Ireland, now. And it is here - in their seeming of-our-time or not - that the candidates are most diverse.
Thus - to take an example - what will matter is not Derek Nally's record as a whistle-blower in itself, but how that record feels in the context of the present. Do people consider the world of the Dowra affair and "the heavy gang" old hat now? Or is there, on the contrary, a mood inclined to confront the wrongs and failures of the past? Might the new self-consciousness about ethics and competence in areas like banking, accountancy, and tax-collecting make Mr Nally seem very much a man of the moment?
Similarly, how time-bound is Mary McAleese's experience of violent oppression? Her main appeal to southern voters, let us be frank, is that she is a northern nationalist. (It is beside the point to say that electing her would offend unionists. So would electing John Hume have offended unionists, and who can doubt that John Hume would have been elected in a landslide? Southerners, when asked to consider the sensibilities of unionists, can be relied on to ask themselves where is the evidence that the unionists ever thought of theirs.)
You don't have to be an enormously keen student of the Republic of Ireland to note that powerful emotions are constantly in play along the spectrum patriotism-nationalism-republicanism. History hasn't gone away. Ms McAleese's personal experience of a home burnt out and a brother beaten senseless for no other crime than being a Catholic in the wrong place is arguably a timeless and placeless Irish archetype. But it may, on the other hand, already have an air of history about it, as though it happened to some old person, long ago. Things have changed very much in Northern Ireland in the last few years and months. Modernisation may have come to even that obdurate conflict. Tony Blair looks like something in the Eurocity. Perhaps younger voters will find Mary McAleese more than a bit old-fashioned.
The other archetypal theme in this presidential election is, of course, the anti-abortion one. Like visceral republicanism, it never goes away from public life. It can't. It must attach itself to every debate and seek to convert the terms of all debates to its own terms. But there are ways and ways of being "pro-life". There was a description in this newspaper last week of a grand dinner Dana attended in New York with the cardinal and various bishops and sundry Irish-American Catholic businessmen. The imagined scene may strike more people than myself as one of the last great displays of patriarchy available in the first world.
That kind of high ecclesiastical company could tell against Dana. The anti-abortion message, whoever expresses it, is logically and emotionally part of the holistic world-view which Adi Roche represents in its anti-nuclear manifestation. Anti-abortion and anti-nuclear politics are both "pro-life". But Dana's agenda - the formal, "family values" one - is much wider than abortion. And it is definitely from a past era, having been mediated through institutions and promulgated by authoritarian figures. It isn't loose and organic and adaptable to the individual in the way environmental politics are. Again - perhaps the generations will vote differently, in response to the difference in style. Adi Roche may seem less excluding than Dana, and much more joyful. Or alternatively, Dana may seem to voters to be more fundamentally - because more sternly - compassionate than Adi Roche.
On the face of it, the most old-hat thing to be in this competition is an old-style politician. But we don't experience elections to the European Parliament as real elections. Mary Banotti MEP is as much a new proposition as the other presidential candidates. She hasn't developed a language for talking about the Presidency yet (which holds out hope of something less reeking of self-love and in-your-face integrity than much of what we've heard so far.) When she does, I hope she is careful with the word "Europe". It used to be the most modern word we had but that's all over now. That was the 20th century. By their alertness to these signs and signals, the candidates will rise or fall.
This election is not about past things, but about the now and the new.