A couple of months ago we thought we were in for a very boring presidential election. Little did we know what was in store. We have ended up in a veritable field of leeks. What we thought would be a soft, gooey, mushy election with the candidates outdoing one another in goodness has turned into a remarkably bitter contest.
There is not much bitterness between the candidates themselves, most of whom seem a bit bemused by all that is happening, but the bitterness between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is truly remarkable and led Ruair i Quinn to wonder if the Civil War was breaking out all over again.
To fight an election on the basis of leaks is bad enough, and is a negative and miserable way of conducting a campaign, but to fight it on the basis of leaks of highly-sensitive documents put together by civil servants in an obviously highly confidential arrangement founded on private discussions in Northern Ireland is truly treacherous.
Drapier has not met anybody who thinks otherwise. The taking of private soundings in the North on behalf of successive governments has now been put in great doubt for the future. People there who have expressed honest personal opinions that may not accord with those of their tribe are put in no small jeopardy.
Foreign Affairs will find it very hard to get people to talk to them again on this basis in the North, and perhaps even in Britain. This is especially lamentable when it is perfectly clear that the officials certainly had nothing to do with the leaking and perform their difficult duties admirably.
It was bad enough to leak Mary McAleese's own views, but surely it was contemptible beyond words to leak the views of Brid Rodgers given in all good faith at a time of great pressure on her and her party.
Drapier has little doubt that some of the more liberal unionists in the North would have been spoken to over the years by Foreign Affairs officials. Have they to live in danger that their privately expressed views, given on a confidential basis, will be touted in Dublin newspapers, too?
One can easily imagine the attacks, verbal and perhaps even worse, to which such people would be subjected. Ian Paisley would thunder on about traitors consorting with the enemy and suchlike language.
This unhappy and ill-fated presidential election will be over next Thursday night one way or another, and things can be expected to calm down. What will not be over, however, are the consequences of these leaks.
Distrust and suspicion will be rife and widespread right throughout the Stormont talks, just at the very time and the very place where trust should be slowly but surely established. The prospects for these talks were always a bit limited. While many people were mildly hopeful, nobody was strongly optimistic. There will be even less optimism after this performance.
The consequences are so serious that Drapier wonders why the question has not been asked more frequently and more pointedly as to why two Sunday papers having got these documents and having realised their longer-term implications, nonetheless printed them when it was clearly not in the national interest to do so.
The general sense of outrage at what has happened has probably cancelled out to a great extent the electoral damage that was intended. Furthermore the various external statements of support or opposition probably cancel one another out also, such as those of Adams and Alderdice.
It is difficult to assess the ultimate net effect, but there is one fact that is undeniable and that is that it has thrust Mary McAleese on to centre-stage and given her more publicity than her four opponents combined. The old political adage, as everyone knows, is that all publicity is good and that no publicity is bad. If that holds true McAleese should be victorious. But will she?
Drapier's forecast is that Mary Banotti will give her a very close run. A great deal will depend on the transfers. We have never had five candidates in a presidential election before, and while three of them may not do terribly well on first preferences they will get a reasonable vote. If those votes transfer predominantly to Banotti she can win even if she were as much as 10 percentage points behind on the first count.
Banotti is not awfully exciting, to put it mildly, but Drapier detects a growing feeling that because she has some political experience and is rather solid, and even dull, she would be less likely to cause problems afterwards.
Whether that feeling is strong enough to translate into sufficient votes in the last five days of the campaign to elect her remains to be seen, but Drapier is certainly not writing her off.
The big surprise of the campaign has been the speed with which Adi Roche has gone backwards. There are mutterings from all parts of the House that Michael D. would have made a much better candidate for Labour and their allies.
These mutterings are accentuated by the fact that privately many deputies are a bit annoyed that not one of the five candidates ever served a day in Leinster House. It makes us feel even more sensitive at a time when tribunals of inquiry and the like have touched raw nerves and brought the profession of politics down to a level of public disrepute that may discourage many able and honourable people from standing for office in the future.
Our noble profession has taken a greater hammering in the last nine months, thanks to two or three people, than during any period that Drapier can remember. The feeling of discomfort is widespread because even the most innocent are tarred by the broad brushes now being used after McCracken and just before the start of the Moriarty and planning tribunals.
But again the question must be asked: if one newspaper decides not to publish leaked official documents that are nationally damaging, why do two others go ahead and publish equally sensitive and damaging leaks?