Here goes. Lynching time again, but the Presidency of Mary Robinson wasn't so hot. Yes, yes, her energy was splendid and all that; but she changed the Presidency into something it had not been before. By the end of the next presidential term of office, we shall probably see that Mary Robinson has sown seeds that the incumbent in the Aras should never have sown. Constitutionally, she has most probably moved us one step closer to a vital conflict of power between the office of President and Dail Eireann.
That might be a long-term issue; in the short term, we must live with other consequences of the Robinson Presidency, which include having no President at all. This has aroused merely silence from the liberal intelligentsia which is normally so vigilant in the defence of the rule of law. Had a Fianna Fail President cut short his Presidency to take up a wellpaid appointment with a multinational company, which is what the UN in reality is, and left us without a Head of State, there would have been blue murder.
Conscience of Ireland
There has been no blue murder because Mary Robinson has appealed throughout her Presidency to that bien-pensant, feelgood constituency which regards itself as the conscience of Ireland. That constituency doesn't like the PDs, Nato, the West, large farmers, bungalows, multinationals, businessmen, Dunnes Stores, Fianna Fail leaders, the US generally and Republicans in particular, the Tories and other people's private cars. It thinks other people should travel on public transport. It likes the unemployed, travellers, feminism, Third World countries and things called liberation movements. It believes the State should do more about poverty, the unemployed and Africa.
It might be right or wrong in its tastes. What is important is that it should be wary about the presidential sauce it uses to satisfy those tastes; what is good for the liberal goose also will be ladled over the illiberal gander. And the gander waddling in from Alabama is the nightmare figure for the b.p., f.g. constituency. One word. Dana.
What is Dana seeking election to? The Aras, which once was the home of reticent and almost - and properly so - invisible presidents such as Erskine Childers, Cearbhall O Dalaigh and Patrick Hillery? Or that greatly enlarged Aras which once declared that one of its new-found duties would be to represent to the world, not just the people of Ireland, but also the people of Somalia?
The people of where? The people of Somalia.
That same Presidency also betook itself three times to Rwanda and assisted in the formulation of Northern policy by choosing to shake the hand of the leader of Sinn Fein in West Belfast at the height of an IRA terrorist war, and not on government instruction.
Departures from convention
The point is not that I disagreed with all of these deeds - though I did and do - but that they were all departures from presidential convention. They extended presidential duties beyond the limited executive and ceremonial functions intended by the Constitution (and which largely mirror the duties of the British monarch) into policymaking, not merely towards the North - my, imagine how nationalist Ireland would have felt if Queen Elizabeth had voluntarily shaken the hand of a loyalist paramilitary leader on the Shankill Road - but also, God help us, Africa.
It's sauce-for-the-gander time. What is to stop the next President - Dana, say - pushing the boundaries of presidential power out further? If a liberal gets away with diluting the power of the elected assembly of the Irish people, Dail Eireann, and extending the power of her office, might not an illiberal try the same caper? Not on Somalia, but on abortion.
Abortion is not a presidential matter. The policies of the State and its Constitution should be beyond comment or interference by the Head of State. The Head of State - provided she hasn't fecked off to a betterpaid job in New York before her term of office is finished, leaving us without a Head of State at all - does what she is told. She accepts credentials from arriving ambassadors. She inspects soldiers. She opens schools, jamborees, and workshops for the disabled. She signs Acts on the instructions of the Government and turns them into law. She stays largely mum, and silently stares out of the window in Aras an Uachtarain, yawning and wondering when her term of office will finally bloody well end.
Retirement home
That is the Presidency. I used to say it shouldn't be a retirement home for hack politicians, but now I'm not so sure. It most certainly should not be an instrument by which people on the margins of political life - or Lord above, show business - want to make their mark on Irish life. If you want to make your mark, stand for Dail Eireann, from which is drawn the one lawful government of Ireland. The direction in which Mary Robinson has sent the Presidency will almost certainly, sooner or later, bring the Park into conflict with the Dail.
The Constitution, truly a document of the Glorious Revolution, denied the Head of State real power. In the Robinson Presidency, we saw the beginnings of the Head of State steering policy by statements and by deed. Those who follow her to the Aras will no doubt be tempted to follow her example, though they will not necessarily have her intelligence or her understanding of Constitutional limitations. Worse - for our stomach's sake anyway - we also might be in for seven years of touchy-feely-caring-outreaching-embracing Presidency, after which we might yearn for seven bracing years of Pol Pot in the Park.
Yep. It's time for Dail Eireann to clip the Phoenix's wings.