It is obvious that the Robinson Presidency broke so much ground that the political establishment is at a loss as to what to do now. Would it be in their best interests to go back to old ways, slightly cosmeticised, and run sound ex-politicians, of whom the Fianna Fail ex-politician will have the electoral edge?
Or is there a kind of moral beauty competition going on, where the only credit the politicians can hope to come away with is the bit of lustre reflected from the candidate? The factor Mrs Robinson introduced to the office was moral authority. But no party happens to have to hand an ex-politician universally agreed to be morally authoritative.
Into this vacuum the name of John Hume has fallen. Thinking about John Hume as our President usefully clarifies thinking about the Presidency itself.
I don't know John Hume personally. But like everyone else, I've heard him on the radio and seen him on television a thousand times in the last 25 years and like very many people I've thought, "Isn't he a wonderful man to stick it out? Isn't he a determined man, and isn't he shrewd and far-seeing, lining up his people in Washington and Strasbourg and Westminster and deploying them whenever there is an opportunity?"
Constitutional nationalism has always looked good because it isn't armed nationalism, but at the same time it lacks the simplicity of appeal of armed nationalism. It is enormously to John Hume's credit that he has kept the cause of constitutional nationalism so alive and supple.
I look with some scepticism on his "totality of the relationships of the peoples of this island" speech, because I think the Northern situation is demonstrably more obdurate than that rhetoric allows for. In all these years, for instance, the SDLP has made no more converts to its leader's vision than unionism has made converts within Northern nationalism.
But the very spaciousness of John Hume's meanings has been useful. Things are a lot better for most people in Northern Ireland now than at any time since its creation. History will show that he was one of the key figures - perhaps the key figure - in guiding it out of the political slum it was under Stormont, calming some of its rage, and bringing it to the hopeful place it is in now.
What, however, has that to do with opening, say, a community centre, in some small bunting-festooned hamlet in the Republic of Ireland? Apart from the antique thrill of being in the presence of a hero - and wouldn't you think, after Bishop Casey and Charlie Haughey, people would be losing their taste for hero-worship? - what have John Hume's great achievements in an abnormal situation got to do with the celebration of our normality? Because that's what an Irish President does: he or she affirms the settled, ordinary, would-be democratic, daily life of this State.
The President lends the dignity of the office to a category of events that belong to the people - that are communal rather than individual, that are driven by our own resources and efforts rather than the profit motive, and that express local or national aspirations and achievements. The President eschews the dynamic plots which bring the present into the future - that's what politicians do - and endorses instead the texture of the place, its societal values, the things about it that we hope are timeless.
Presidents aren't cardinals - they don't come from a special caste, to perform an arcane role. They come from us and, daily, go back among us. All our Presidents have represented recognisable national styles - including, in Mary Robinson's case, decent, well-funded, middle-class altruism. All our Presidents have been products of the distinctive culture of the Republic. Of all positions, the Presidency is the one least congenial to imposition. It is about us. If we haven't got a hero ourselves, to match John Hume, we shouldn't import one.
This is not even to raise the question of whether John Hume would enjoy opening the community centre or would do it well. But his destiny has long called him to grander settings. This is no smallest criticism of him. But it would mean, if we elected or proclaimed him President, that we'd moved away as quickly as we could from Mary Robinson's characterisation of Ireland.
She put in a year of putting herself before private people in all kinds of places around the country, as a way of learning what contemporary, unreported Ireland is truly like. In her campaign for the Presidency and in the Park she stressed the grassroots rather than elites, the powerless rather than the powerful, the domestic rather than the formally impressive.
And these emphases were perfectly well understood by the people at large, who saw that they made sense of the office of President of this small place. The other stuff - receiving ambassadors and going to state funerals abroad and so on - anyone who can stand the boredom can do and has done.
I myself would like a President who builds on Mary Robinson's legacy, perhaps in a more relaxed and accessible way. But in any case, I reserve the right to admire John Hume greatly but to stop well short of thinking of him as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Why is he more noble, for instance, than Seamus Mallon, who hasn't even been sustained by world-wide acclaim? And if the SDLP is to be congratulated for patiently pursuing its aims without succumbing to the temptation of violence, is there not a unionist or two who has done exactly the same thing?
This brings us to the fascinating question of what it is John Hume has done for the South's furtive relationship to nationalism that makes Southerners adore him so. What is it that he has made respectable? Does he, after all, or doesn't he, want a united Ireland, and if he does, what would he plan for his fellow-citizens who do not? Or does he not want a united Ireland? And if he doesn't, is that quite clear to the Southern electorate?
These are not questions that are normally asked of people seeking office in the South. This country here, the Republic of Ireland, has its successes and its failures. They are related to, but not the same as, the successes and failures of Northern Ireland.
The differences are something that would emerge as John Hume argued his way towards our Presidency. Because he would have to argue his suitability, wouldn't he? Our politicians couldn't be so insensitive to the variety of opinion within society here - never mind on the island as a whole - as to suggest he run without opposition?
More than most people in the world, probably, John Hume deserves prizes. But is it appropriate to give the Presidency of our country as a prize?