Notwithstanding the bad-tempered exchanges in the Dail yesterday, those in public life will greet with a sense of relief the restoration of a calmer political atmosphere since the weekend. They - all of us - have been touched by something elemental, nasty and potentially violent. On Monday it might have been said that a form of hysteria was abroad. By last night, thanks in no small measure to calming and sensible words from Mr John Hume and Mrs Brid Rodgers, that had been largely dispelled.
Reckless, not to say destructive, influences have been at work. The leakage of classified documents has sent tremors through the normally stolid and imperturbable Department of Foreign Affairs. Considerable damage has been done to this essential instrument of State policy. But hardly any less disquieting has been the unleashing of sentiments which scarcely concealed deep undertones of prejudice, hostility and even racism.
There may be many reasons why Prof McAleese should not become President of Ireland. But what we have witnessed over recent days was an utterly unacceptable attempt to block her campaign by smearing her life-experience, her community, her background and the tradition she comes from. That this should be attempted by some of the Svengali-type figures that lurk on the fringes of political life might not be wholly unexpected. But it is reprehensible beyond words when mainstream political figures, and some commentators, pick up the opportunity provided to seek cynically to bring down a woman whose principles or politics do not accord with their own.
Mr Hume's and Mrs Rodgers's interventions have hopefully proven decisive in ending the McCarthyite attempt to link Prof McAleese with Sinn Fein and, by logical extension, with the IRA. Those who argue against her candidacy on the grounds that she is too Catholic, or because they regard her as authoritarian or too right-wing, have every right to do so. Those who dislike the very notion that a bright, Northern, Catholic woman of modest background, an avowed nationalist, should aspire to the Presidency of Ireland are free to express that view at the ballot box. (If Lord Alderdice had a vote, he would presumably do so.) But nobody can label her a Provo or a fellow-traveller.
Prof McAleese does not empathise with unionists very much. And the feelings are clearly reciprocated. But it is fatuous to think if a President were elected who was well-disposed to them that it would transform attitudes across the Border. As Mr Maurice Hayes, the former ombudsman has pointed out, President Robinson was so concerned for unionist feelings that when the Hillsborough Agreement was signed she resigned from the Labour Party in protest. Yet the unionists still protested every time she crossed the Border. What could help to transform attitudes would be a nationalist President who would use the office imaginatively to extend the hand of friendship to the unionist community. What could make a difference would be a President who was able to step out of the tribal circle and seek reconciliation with the other side. One makes peace, as the late Yitzhak Rabin declared, not with one's friends but with one's enemies. The disappointment of Mary McAleese's campaign has been the failure to articulate any such vision. Her slogan "building bridges" has not been matched with any detailed blueprint of how it would be done if she were in Aras an Uachtarain. It is a serious lack and it must tell against her.