His fate should serve as a salutary reminder to anybody thinking of dabbling in the maelstrom of Irish politics. Six weeks of emotional and political highs and lows have left Derek Nally with a hefty overdraft and firmly ensconced at the bottom of the poll.
Worse than this, his reputation has come under severe attack in the course of a bruising campaign. Unwittingly, perhaps, Nally came to play a central role in this campaign, but his interventions served only to consolidate Mary McAleese's victory.
Nally's claim to the moral high ground simply evaporated as his role in the McAleese/Sinn Fein controversy unfolded. Within days of his attack on McAleese's character, he was forced into a humiliating climbdown.
The self-proclaimed standardbearer of old-fashioned values was forced to eat humble pie. Arguably, he was led astray.
Meanwhile, his political message never got through to voters, probably because of a lack of preparation and focus. He failed even to capitalise on being the only male candidate in the race. The much-touted hidden man's vote went, in the end, to the four women candidates.
He did well in Wexford - his home county - and got 13 per cent of first preference votes in neighbouring Carlow. But elsewhere his polling was just under five per cent.
Only Nally's sense of decency - including his willingness to apologise when he erred - his disarming tendency to make unguarded comments and the unflappable good cheer of his band of supporters emerge as positive points in an otherwise ill-starred campaign.
It had all begun so well. There was the thrill of his last-minute candidacy, then the frantic helicopter dash around the country to secure the required four nominations from county councils.
Some talked about the founder of Victim Support as a real contender. He was interviewed on RTE by Pat Kenny and made a huge impression. This was the former Garda leader who made a stand against police brutality in the 1970s, and phone-tapping in the 1980s. He was fearless in standing up to the Haughey government on extradition. Just the sort of courage a President might need in a crisis.
Everywhere he went, he was accompanied by a busload of supporters - doctors, farmers, publicans, all of them political neophytes and most from Bunclody, Co Wexford.
Yet the enthusiasm disguised a lack of organisation. Nally's campaign team was thrown together at short notice. There was never any time to devise a proper strategy, or develop his vision for the Presidency. And some of those who came on board made strange bedfellows indeed.
Businessman and friend John Dunne acted as his campaign manager and reputedly bankrolled much of the campaign. John Caden, recently departed from Radio Ireland, acted as publicity director and provided a conduit for the advice of his friend, Eoghan Harris.
Harris's memo to Nally is now famous. Lose weight, buy long jackets to hide your bulk, don't sound like a cop, went the more laughable aspects of this bluffer's guide to politics.
Harris told Nally to synthesise the traditional and the modern by saying things like: "I'm the kind of man who holds doors open for women, but I'm also the kind of man who would open doors for women". At one point, Nally responded to a question from me by saying exactly this.
However, things went seriously wrong when he took the advice to go for the jugular after the Sunday papers leaked the Department of Foreign Affairs memos on McAleese and Sinn Fein.
It was pure theatre when, appearing on Questions & Answers, Nally took a statement from his jacket pocket and said that McAleese was not a "proper person" to be President.
But it also harked back to the political witch-hunts in the US in the 1950s, when Senator Joe McCarthy used the same device. Events unravelled quickly thereafter.
The following evening, Nally accepted McAleese's assurances that she had no Sinn Fein links. But the next day, Caden contradicted this in an article in The Irish Times.
After some internal argument, Caden was forced to resign.
Independent MEP Pat Cox lent some much-needed help in the later weeks of the campaign, but Nally never really recovered. The damage was done.