If Mary McAleese fails to become President, it will be because of a combination of dirty tricks, prejudice and her own relentless arrogance. Either way, this campaign has cheapened public discourse and deepened division.
The dirty tricks have been more dirty than usual because of the collateral damage they inflict on third parties in the North, on the decencies of diplomacy and maybe even on the prospects for peace. And it is just not believable that the perpetrators of these dirty tricks do not reside in Fine Gael.
It is difficult to treat seriously Fine Gael indignation over the suggestion that they are indeed the perpetrators of the current leaks. Fine Gael had access to the documents that are now being leaked. Fine Gael has the motive to leak them. Fine Gael has the cynicism to do so. Fine Gael has a track record of doing so. Yes, this is not proof but it constitutes grounds for suspicion.
The prejudice that this controversy reveals is the most significant aspect to this affair. Even if everything suggested by these leaked documents about Mary McAleese's politics were a fair reflection of her views, what would turn on it?
The reports suggest that Mary McAleese believed that many middle-class people in Northern Ireland could countenance voting for Sinn Fein last May and June, even though there wasn't a formal IRA ceasefire. The "revelations'` suggested that she herself was pleased with Sinn Fein's strong performance in those elections and that she favoured an electoral pact between the SDLP and Sinn Fein before the Westminster elections in May.
The reports revealed that she was part of a Redemptorist peace mission and that one representative of the SDLP was irritated by representations made by this peace mission, charging that the mission was pushing more a Sinn Fein agenda than an SDLP one.
Anybody even vaguely conversant with nationalist opinion in Northern Ireland earlier this year knew that many moderate nationalists were likely to vote Sinn Fein. This was because they wanted both to cajole the republican movement into constitutional politics and deliver a sideswipe to the British for what they regarded as their calculated frustration of the peace process in the 17 months after the initial IRA ceasefire. It had nothing to do with support for violence.
It would not have been surprising if such views were shared by Mary McAleese herself - indeed the suggestion that she was pleased with Sinn Fein's electoral successes suggests this may have been so. But so what? Many of us may have calculated differently or believed that any such "encouragement`' to republicans to join the democratic process was outweighed by the danger that political support for them would be interpreted by them (or others) as implicit support for violence.
But can we not allow that others might legitimately take a different view of that calculation? Indeed that because they lived in Northern Ireland their calculation might be more reliable than ours? And remember that at that time there was already an informal IRA ceasefire - or at least a greatly diminished IRA campaign - and there was a widespread view that another ceasefire would follow quickly on a Labour victory in the British general election.
Many Northern nationalists also believed there should have been an SDLP-Sinn Fein pact before the last Westminster elections, even in the absence of an IRA ceasefire. They did so because they believed the maximisation of nationalist seats at Westminster would strengthen the nationalist side in the all-party negotiations and that this too would draw republicans further into the political process. Some also believed that it was better to flirt with Sinn Fein than have bigoted unionists elected to the House of Commons.
Again, one may legitimately disagree with these calculations, but surely one can allow that genuine and respectable motives inspired such views. Indeed, there was a belief for several months that John Hume was of this opinion and was deflected from it only by his party colleagues.
As for Brid Rodgers and the Redemptorist peace mission - the "revelation" breathlessly presented over the weekend almost as "the smoking gun" - the most striking aspect of that was that Mary McAleese was involved in such a commendable enterprise and had stayed quiet about it. And what is surprising about the fact that one side to whom representations were made should consider that the agenda of another side was being pushed upon them?
And additionally, there was the kiss-of-death "endorsement" of Gerry Adams. Adams was asked on a radio programme for whom he would vote in the presidential election. His first response was that he would "probably" vote No 1 for Mary McAleese and then for Adi Roche, Mary Banotti and Dana, and not at all for Derek Nally. What was surprising about that, other than that, for once, he answered a straight question with a straight answer? Had John Hume been a presidential candidate, Gerry Adams would hardly have been able to contain himself with declarations of endorsement, and would we have been troubled about that?
The fact is there is a prejudice here against Northern nationalists. We don't like their accents, we don't like their "attitude" and we don't like their politics, even though we pretend to share this last. But worse than not liking their politics, we don't tolerate their politics. We can't allow them to have a different view even of their own condition and welfare. What else explains the rows of raised eyebrows and arrays of curled lips over the "revelations" of commonplace nationalist views?
Mary McAleese has not helped her own cause. The combination of defensiveness and arrogance has been needlessly off-putting. So too has been a hint that her candour has been incomplete. Is it really credible that an experienced Foreign Affairs official misreported her views so thoroughly? Is it really credible that she holds none of the views she was reported as expressing?
The "bridge-building" blather may also do her down. Her personality and her exaggerated sense of her own worth aren't conducive to all that outreaching and embracing that she goes on about embarrassingly. Her protestations of silent support from a significant number of unionists isn't remotely credible either.
But it may be that it was her performance in Galway in Sunday night that has done her most damage. Her priggish dismissal of questions about her political views, arising from the crop of "revelations" that morning and her contemptuous disdain for the journalists who had been accompanying her, raised more serious doubts about her suitability for the Presidency than anything else.
It is not so much whether we can have a President whose nationalism is perhaps a little greener than we would wish, but whether we can tolerate displays of insufferable arrogance and self-preening for seven years. Ironically, she suffers from the habitual Fine Gael propensity to be overly impressed by her own moral and intellectual superiority. Maybe the issue boils down to whether we can have a Fianna Fail President without the redeeming features of the Fianna Fail culture?