Pulling names from a hat. This is what Irish democracy was reduced to in recent months as the media conducted virtual auditions for the next Uachtaráin na hÉireann. Joe Duffy, Linda Martin, Conor McGregor, Mary Hanafin, Fintan O’Toole, Michael McDowell, Heather Humphreys, Barry Andrews, Michelle O’Neill, Seán Kelly, Frances Fitzgerald, Mick Wallace, Geraldine Byrne Nason, Colum Eastwood, Frances Black, Peter Power, Peter Casey, Cynthia Ní Mhurchú, Jarlath Burns, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Mike Ryan, Micheál Martin, Mary Lou McDonald, Gerry Adams, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Anyone with name recognition, a two-piece suit and an ability to string a cúpla focal together – or not – has been given a twirl. It’s been mildly entertaining; a sort of Rose of Tralee for the over-35s.
Certainly, some excellent potential candidates have been mentioned in dispatches. As for others, I can only echo the woman in Dublin’s O’Connell Street when Channel Four News invited her to contemplate a President McGregor – “Jesus, Christ, I’d leave the country.” Remember, the bum on the seat in the Oval Office was, once upon a time, treated as a comedic diversion, but we need not look that far for proof. Our own country, after all, selected a turkey to represent us in the Eurovision Song Contest.
This week, two contestants have been announced. Both are serious candidates with appeal for entirely different classes of voters. Former EU commissioner Mairead McGuinness has the fluency and boardroom polish of a Fine Gael blue blood. Independent TD Catherine Connolly applies her polish to advocacy for peace and justice.
Others are limbering up on the sidelines. Declan Ganley, a socially conservative businessman, and Aubrey McCarthy, a first-time senator, are reported to be seeking Oireachtas nominations, while Aontú dangles the promise of a super candidate. Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin wait and watch like snipers behind the ditch. It’s time the rest of us started taking this election seriously.
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Few events exposé Ireland’s innate Pontius Pilate syndrome quite as sharply as a presidential election. Maybe it’s a native postcolonial sense of powerlessness that creates ripples of ridicule in the discussion. Each time a vacancy occurs, the bellyaching starts that the office is but a frivolous waste of money and should be abolished. The same impulse marks the conversation about neutrality; the idea that, in the greater scheme of things, Ireland is too insignificant for its constitutional pacifism to impinge on the global realpolitik.
Currently, there are those arguing that the Occupied Territories Bill won’t make any difference to besieged Palestinians in the West Bank and, ergo, we should wash our hands of it. If what Ireland does is irrelevant, why are Israel’s propagandists operating a virulent anti-Ireland campaign with the help of useful idiots in the Trump administration? When a so-called diplomat like Mike Huckabee resorts to cartoonish stereotyping about the drunken Irish, you know you’ve got them worried.
[ Occupied Territories Bill: Irish voters grow more cautious, poll showsOpens in new window ]
The argument that the role of president is devoid of real power is an odd perspective to cling to after 35 consecutive years of radical presidencies. Since the start of the summer, broadcasters and headline writers have been puzzling over the mystery of why nobody appeared keen on the €330,000-a-year job. Could it be the boredom of seven years languishing in the Park that is deterring them? Or maybe it’s the cut-throat election campaign?
The bigger mystery is that one glaringly obvious reason for the hesitancy goes unmentioned – fear of failure. The bar has been set so high by Mary Robinson, Mary McAleese and Michael D Higgins that, sooner or later, some incumbent will not be the most popular person in the land. That consideration narrows the field of potential contenders to the truly committed and those who truly ought to be committed.
Ireland’s international relationships are changing dramatically. The country is no longer the beggar of the EU, the cap-doffing neighbour of the UK or the all-singing, all-dancing darling of the US. We need a president who can, simultaneously, represent its evolving identity abroad and those it is leaving behind at home.
Many of the names that have been floated have a certain cachet. Most have read a book or two, know to work the dinner cutlery from the outside-in and not to speak with their mouths full of food or fury. But this is not a beauty contest. It’s not even a personality contest. The X factor being sought is character. Instead of asking who we want to be the next president, we might more usefully ask what we want them to be.
[ The next president should be selected by lottery. It could be youOpens in new window ]
Brave, for starters. I want a president who will not buckle under intimidation. Someone with the fortitude Higgins showed when he rejected Israel’s anti-Semitism smear as “a slander against Ireland”.
I want a president who will show solidarity with Irish citizens in Northern Ireland when their tricolour and effigies of their political leaders are set aflame on Twelfth bonfires.
I want a president who cannot but weep at the sight of man’s inhumanity, as Robinson did during the Somali famine, thus drawing the world’s attention to it.
I want a president who is for all the people and not only those of her own persuasion, as McAleese demonstrated when she drew the ire of the Catholic hierarchy by taking communion at a Protestant service in Christ Church Cathedral.
I want a president who will stand with immigrants in the face of racist protests. Someone who will visit GAA-playing Palestinian children from the Occupied Territories to assure them that the decision by the Department of Justice forbidding their Irish tour misrepresents this country’s values.
I want a president who will be unavoidably absent should the Taoiseach emulate Keir Starmer by unfurling an invitation for a State visit when he visits Trump next St Patrick’s Day and the big bully turns up here.
I want a president who will get out of the Áras to stand with victims of sexual and domestic violence, young people at risk of harm, the homeless, the sick, casualties of injustice and miscarriages of justice, artists and the caretakers of Ireland’s natural ecology.
The pages of history keep turning. Ireland has arrived at the chapter where it finds its voice. It needs a president who will encourage it to keep raising it, for the country’s own good and for the greater good.
