She'd come from Alabama, but she didn't have a banjo on her knee and she wasn't even in the humour for singing. Dana was already behaving with the seriousness of a presidential candidate when she met the press in a Dublin hotel yesterday. She tiptoed around the outdoor swimming pool in Jurys like a woman who knew she was about to go in at the deep end.
It was significant that she was beginning her campaign in the heartland of Dublin 4. From her home in Bible-belt America, Dana had come to the Sodom and Gomorrah of latter-day Ireland to launch her bid to save the nation from itself.
Herself a testament to clean living, she is ageing well. Twenty-seven years after she and Ireland were teenage sweethearts, she smiles as winsomely as ever and her voice is still that of a girl tripping through the daisies. Even though Ireland has since grown into smug middle age, she might just succeed in rekindling the romance.
Her campaign has a peculiar timeliness: 1970 was the year of the Arms Crisis as well as Ireland's first Eurovision success. And now that Mr Haughey has met his nemesis, some people might think it's time to punish Dana, too - perhaps with seven years in the Park.
She also has her mother in her corner, on yesterday's evidence a formidable asset. "I don't blame people for thinking it's a joke," said Mrs Sheila Brown, clasping an interviewer's hand. "I thought it was a joke, too, at first. But I think Dana would be a perfect President."
"That's my mammy talking," said Dana, and her mammy kept talking, praising Ireland and John Hume ("a great man and a good man, and a personal friend - I spoke to him on the phone yesterday") and her daughter equally. Her daughter grew animated only when Sky TV tactfully put it to her that her greatest-hits collection was selling again "for the first time in years". She pointed out that the record had only been released in 1995 and then politely declined Sky's invitation to sing.
She has clearly learned something from Mary Robinson about gravitas. It's all right to say "Come dance with me in Ireland". But if you want to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate, it's not all right to dance.
