There was a definite pattern. It started with a buzz of activity in the bar or lounge as the party people gathered with a mixture of curiosity and optimism. They had seen her on television and heard her on the radio.
The candidate would arrive, sometimes in the blare of a Garda escort, surrounded by her people, shadowed by her husband. Her hair would be perfect, her make-up immaculate with not even a smudge on her polished high heels. After 20 minutes in her presence they had her in the Park.
Take the wet Monday night in Cavan town where they filled the function room in the Farnham Arms Hotel with cigarette smoke and applause for the woman they knew would be President.
Mary McAleese had a busy day. It was only two weeks into the campaign and she had hurtled through several counties to get to Cavan for the civic reception the council had decided to give every candidate.
Then it was on to the Farnham Arms, where the audience listened in absolute silence as McAleese delivered her stump speech, in a way that made it seem it had been written exclusively for them.
They nodded in silent agreement when she spoke convincingly about her "cool head" to deal with the constitutional role of the Presidency, quietly behind the scenes, and her "warm heart" to be an ambassador for Ireland.
She wisecracked about her connection to Cavan. She had produced an anecdote for every town and village, and this was to be one of the more tenuous. She had once shared a flat with a girl from Cavan, she said. Her name was Susan Smith and she hoped she wasn't in the audience. A silent pause indicated she wasn't.
Susan shared the flat with the young Mary and her sister, who came alive at midnight. The unnamed sister took up the tin whistle, and one night the future Presidentelect came rushing out of her bedroom in a temper to find Susan Smith snapping the tin whistle in half after a late-night rehearsal. Her sister was lucky, McAleese said; otherwise the tin-whistle player might have needed surgery.
Every engagement was testimony to the strength of the local cumann and the organisation of headquarters. A supportive crowd met her at most venues, with few empty seats in the function rooms and bars. If her confidence needed any boosting this was the perfect start to the campaign.
In Carrick-on-Shannon earlier that day one senior Fianna Fail figure spoke in awe of the machine behind this woman. He had received three phone calls from head office to ensure that he would be there to greet her.
The candidate who arrived cut a different figure from the slightly frumpy fluffy-haired woman who won the party nomination on September 17th. The shiny blouse buttoned to the neck disappeared, never to return. The haircut and makeover were touched up regularly, with hair appointments rostered into her daily schedule.
The people who groomed Bertie into the sharp-suited Taoiseach-about-town had a female model to work on. It was difficult to reconcile her with the woman described by Brenda Power in 1995 as the epitome of freshly-scrubbed intellect over appearance.
"She wears no make-up and little jewellery," Power wrote then. "She has the deliberate air of one who believes that no minute of her time, no more than an adornment on her person, nor word from her mouth, is there for show."
But this was show time. And she went down a bomb. Working to a punishing schedule she barely showed the effort, her energy fed by the all-round bonhomie of supporters.
All that changed in the Galway Great Southern one Sunday night. Her handlers speak privately about the notorious night as the moment they thought might have lost her the election.
Wearing a fixed smile that grew grimmer by the minute, she was pushed through reporters as they tried to ask questions about the leaked Department of Foreign Affairs documents. All of it appeared on the nine o'clock news with the persistent voice of Jim Fahy asking her why she was acting like this.
On Monday she finally sat down to answer questions in a small room on Inish Mor surrounded by supporters. She twisted the rings on her fingers with slightly shaking hands and her neck was flushed. It was the first and last time she looked uncomfortable, and it was difficult to read whether it was a sign of nerves or barely suppressed rage.
When she was running for the Fianna Fail nomination she said her Presidency would have a "three-strand role" The first would be the ambassadorial role, the second the "protective role" to ensure that the will of the people was properly embodied in government legislation and the third would be a "caring outreach" role.
"As President, I would have a caring, outreach role. The role is not to wait around for respect and deference but to go out and offer love, affection and particularly affirmation of every single individual in the State."
The outreach embrace did not extend to journalists, and especially not to this reporter. In that small bright room on Inish Mor she sat on a traditional wooden chair and verbally held questions between finger and thumb, lip curled in disgust.
A small child slept on a woman's lap throughout the bruising encounter as the woman who spoke of building bridges demanded to know what I and others were trying to insinuate. Each point scored against the reporters got the laughing approval of the gathering, who in turn tut-tutted loudly at each dastardly question.
The radio played the News at One as we came down the stairs slightly shell-shocked by the public mauling. Sean O'Rourke's voice reported the call by Lord Alderdice for her to step down. She marched out of the centre towards the sea, her brown mackintosh flapping in the breeze. Tight-faced and silent, her handlers followed.
Some time after this encounter her team talked privately about how her tactic had worked. It had been the crisis 48 hours of the campaign. "So a few reporters were left smarting. So what?" was the attitude. The candidate had not put a foot wrong at a time when she felt an interview could have lost her the election.
In the days that followed an uneasy calm settled. Anyone with a notebook was routinely set upon by bestickered supporters and told to do right by Mary McAleese.
Ironically, the next time reporters sat down with the candidate it was within the whitewashed walls of an Irish centre in Manchester, where all the surroundings were designed to look like we were back on Inish Mor.
There the similarity ended. The storm had passed, the polls were wafting her into the Park and the toughest question we had was why she had left the State in the last hours of a campaign.
Mary McAleese began by apologising for her cold and saying she hoped she would not pass on her germs. She spoke quietly about the "global Irish family" following a speech that sounded like a dry run for her next visit as President.
"I just want to know what have they done with the real Mary McAleese," one reporter said afterwards.
The transformation was complete. It was just a matter of time before the woman who had practised being President for six weeks got to play the real thing.