The hard men and women of Labour, veterans of decades of troughs and triumphs, lie shellshocked this weekend, dull with defeat, despair, exhaustion, even bewilderment, their judgment in question, their motives under scrutiny, their CVs under review. For them, the past seven weeks have been akin to a form of crude, sustained torture.
"I don't think it's ever happened in Irish political history that a candidate at 38 per cent in the polls fell from such a height," said a still-baffled Senator Pat Magner, campaign tour manager. "And I don't think you'll find two people to agree on the cause of it."
The post-mortems, for now, are distinguished by an absence of cynicism, bile or guile. True, a few of the wilier players were inclined to distance themselves as the campaign went into free-fall; the evidence for the most part, however, points to the contrary.
Even while each side seemed to be actively courting disaster, a genuine sense of mutual respect and liking blossomed between Roche and her closest political handlers. But own-goals there were, and one was in the net even before the throw-in.
Everybody now accepts, for example, that Roche - a non-politician too honest to tell a lie or dissimulate when asked a direct question - should have been "disappeared" for four or five days after accepting the nomination. Instead, she told the truth to Charlie Bird, Fianna Fail took fright, rejected Albert Reynolds and the rest is history.
Her insistence that she be seen to be independent was also a factor; an independence that, allied to "the four-headed monster" that was the campaign committee, and compounded by two campaign managers at the head, damned the decision-making process from the start. Many of the serious blunders and lack of decisive action can be traced back to that.
Take what has become known as the "head-bobbing incident", probably the most damaging image of the campaign. Back in Clonmel to launch the tour, she got a warm reception, spoke well and comported herself with presidential grace. But as the meeting wound up, singer and supporter Luka Bloom stepped forward with a guitar.
The handlers sensed danger. Some tried to divert him to the street, where something of a carnival atmosphere prevailed. Nobody, however, was in executive control. The non-politicians, exasperated with old-style political campaigns, clearly approved.
The performance went ahead, the crowd clapping and singing along, with the cameras, naturally, zeroing in on Roche. They found her bobbing her head emphatically from side to side, mouthing words that didn't appear to synchronise with Bloom's, flanked by a poker-faced Dick Spring and Proinsias De Rossa. It was the lead item on the main television news bulletins that night.
The damage done by that one image was inestimable. It came, furthermore, on the heels of a disastrous first week, a week spent fire-fighting an image and gravitas deficiency spawned by a concerted smear campaign in the Sunday papers and sustained for an eightday period by the promise of new "revelations" (which turned out to be a harmless taped memo), as well as a muck-raking episode involving her brother Donal.
Reeling from the personal abuse and terrified of long-term damage to her Chernobyl Project, she could barely absorb what was happening. It occurred, furthermore, on the first weekend after her nomination, when she and her husband, Sean, had travelled back to Cork, confident of a warm homecoming in her adopted town.
What they encountered instead was a home under siege and a concerted assault on herself and her life's work, emanating from what should have been their electoral heartland. Again, crucially, nobody from campaign HQ had been assigned to travel with them.
It wasn't until Sunday morning that they were joined by the Labour press officer, Tom Butler, who guided them through the subsequent fray, a time characterised by Pat Magner as "like being under fire from the hilltop with no cover, a lot of it perpetrated by will o' the wisp assailants, holding secret press conferences at dead of night and issuing anonymous letters and statements".
She remained upright, conducting herself with dignity and restraint, but the emotional toll was enormous.
Precious time that should have been spent in quiet rooms, working on ideas and perceptions, on style and content, had been spent instead fire-fighting in the public glare. And though she showed enormous courage, resilience and humour under pressure, robbed of that time and her confidence shattered, the impact was deadly.
Her fighting spirit seemed to come to the fore again in the final days, but by then it was too late.