I'm for Dana. I have now seen her several times and each time have been charmed by that soft musical voice allied to a steely determination. She has been lampooned by many people who call themselves liberal - the blanket that covers a multitude of good and bad, but in Ireland is nearly always tied to agreement to abortion and divorce. She makes no bones about her extreme antipathy to both and is all for happy families. I believe that people in the Republic still see Dana as the fetching little girl who won the Eurovision so long ago and are quite staggered at the views of a woman who looks like a younger version of Debbie Reynolds.
Waiting for Friday's Late Late Show to begin, you would wonder if women will ever learn. Just five years after the 1992 general election when the wave of new women TDs were humiliated on the Late Late Show, the batch running for the Park were back on the same show again at the weekend. They (plus Derek Nally) sat, as if transfixed by the audience, the cameras and the need to impress the huge numbers of viewers.
If, as a friend (who needs enemies?) of Mary McAleese enthused on another programme, Mary was simply the cleverest, the best and the most beautiful of all candidates ever, would you not wince and wish her in hell? Indeed, hell would not be half good enough for that woman who added eagerly, nearly falling off her garden chair with excitement, "Mary is simply the hostess with the mostest".
On the Late Late Show debate, McAleese subtly evaded the Sinn Fein furore and came across as a well-heeled articulate woman whose father went to school without shoes. So what's new? Most agree she would probably make a good President, but even among people who have had long experience of her I have yet to meet one who likes her. They refer to her "icy coldness, her arrogance".
Did the candidates not foresee potholes of problems on the Late Late Show? One might be prepared for a gutting on Prime Time or Questions and Answers, which must be nerve-wracking, but it would be based on a range of expected and predictable questions, while the Late Late Show has decades of experience in putting on a good show on any subject under the sun. And Gay Byrne is simply the host with the most ability for asking the most awkward and unpredictable questions and demanding answers. In the end he appeared to give up on them.
Why did the candidates not realise the show is in the entertainment section of RTE and that elections are in current affairs? Did they not entertain the notion of demanding top viewing time, with a similar format but with the gentler touch of current affairs?
So there we were on Friday night - the million or so of us with a chance to vote - waiting for the five candidates to ramble into the firing line. By the end of the programme I was not much better informed about the line-up. What I was sure of was that I preferred Dana to any of the others. She had a waspish way with her and a mischievous sense of humour on a night when all the others were sunk in gloom. They sat a good distance from each other but there was so much sweety-sweety politesse around that it was difficult to imagine any decent bun-fight emerging.
Mary Banotti, easily the woman with the best track record, started off the warm-up but wasted much of her allotted two minutes by concentrating on her past achievements. They are considerable, but well-known. Derek Nally should have been more focused since he has a clear range of experience of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, and through youth work and his establishment of Victim Support. Adi Roche is still banging on about "our precious environment". She cleared the air about opening the Aras up to travellers and drug addicts. Not on, she affirmed. She was misquoted, she said, and then got into a bit of a tangle about whether or not she would sign a Bill relating to nuclear power.
Dana was angry about the way political parties (Fianna Fail and Fine Gael) were using the election to further their own ends. She was the only one to openly admit she would have difficulty in signing a Bill that would allow abortion on demand. At the end of the day, I want Dana in the Park.