In dropping its former Taoiseach and leader, Mr Albert Reynolds, and choosing Ms Mary McAleese as the party's candidate for the Presidency, Fianna Fail has shown more than a glimmering of good sense. Mr Ahern's handling of the selection process to date had been as maladroit as his worst enemies could have wished. But at one bound yesterday he banished the Reynolds spectre from the election landscape and put the party back in the race for Aras an Uachtarain with more than a fighting chance. Politics is a cruel trade. And it was cruel to Albert Reynolds yesterday. What might have marked his restoration became instead a day of further reverse. It is difficult not to sympathise with him on a personal basis, for all that he invited misfortune on his own head - and not for the first time. It would have been unthinkable that a man forced from office as Taoiseach and so steeped in controversy should be President.
The fact that Mr Reynolds could not see that and continued to press his case with such resolution betokens his own extraordinary perspective on events and his place in them. He will reflect that Ms McAleese could not have secured the nomination without co-ordinated planning among the rump of the parliamentary party and without the blessing of the leadership. In short, he was taken out. Mary McAleese will be a strong candidate for Fianna Fail. She is an accomplished and forthright woman. She has had a varied career as a lawyer, a broadcaster and an academic. And she has had life experience which has exposed her both to privilege and to privation. She has lived within the hallowed halls of universities. And she has seen at first hand, in her own childhood neighbourhood, the corrosive effects of violence and sectarian hatred. Some have portrayed her as too orthodox, committed to a brand of Catholicism which is too narrow for today's Ireland. If so, it is a Catholicism which is well-informed and intelligently defended. She is no fellow-traveller of the extreme groups which have moved in the shadows of recent referendums. Some have characterised her as socially conservative. If so, it is a conservatism which is thoughtful and purposeful. She has the intellectual weight and the confidence which could make her a credible successor to Mary Robinson. Her legal background should give her an understanding of the responsibilities of the Presidency. Her career in academic administration should have taught her something about how large organisations operate and how power is brokered. Time will tell if this is so.
Fianna Fail has chosen cleverly. She will have a useful vote-gathering appeal to those who are suspicious of political correctness. For all that violence has touched her own family in Belfast, she resists the cult of victimisation. She will appeal to people's confidence and self-sufficiency more than massaging their grievances. She will remind people that it is possible to respect one's own tribe and beliefs without denigrating anybody else's. With four woman candidates, the 1997 Irish presidential election will set some sort of record in world politics. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the selection processes have been emulative of the Mary Robinson phenomenon in 1990. Nonetheless, a range of choices has opened up before the electorate which is wider than anything that might have been anticipated even a fortnight ago. That's democracy for you, as somebody might have said.