My feelings about the Irish presidency are pretty much summed up in the title. While the Irish president has a lot of ceremonial power including being the supreme commander of the defence forces, it is in effect a redundant role and at the very least the salary and perks associated with it should be massively reduced. The prospect of any of the candidates getting a quarter of a million a year to cut a few ribbons and wear some shamrocks honestly upsets me.
But I digress! Monday evening was the final in a series of debates between the 7 candidates. Here is my take on the proceedings. First off the moderator Pat Kenny asked each candidate how they would like to be remembered in 7 years time if they won the presidency and told them they each had 60 seconds.
Considering each of them has been campaigning for a few months and they are campaigning for “technically” the highest office in the land, I could not believe the generic platitudes that they spewed forth. The only stand out candidates were the two (Dana, Norris) who had to look at notes for what they wanted to do with their presidency. From this point on it was pretty clear that this debate was going to be more like an argument at 4AM on boards.ie then an epic discussion of policies a la Santos vs. Vinick (two fictional characters going for the American presidency agree to a debate with no time limits on the TV show West Wing). Needless to say all candidates would use their experience to bla bla culture bla bla jobs??.
A Summary of this debate/election in 500 words
Mary Davis - Sees herself as the next Mary Robinson, however everyone else sees her as the next Dana. Also when she mentions her experience on state boards it just reminds people how much money is being wasted on salaries and expenses for people on these boards.
Dana - Not sure what job she thinks she is running for, but mentioned bondholders and dollars quite a bit. Timothy Geithner she ain’t
David Norris - Again not sure what job he thinks he’s running for, but his performance on the night was a metaphor for his campaign - bit of a joke. Like Paula Radcliffe a few years ago, if you stop running mid race and do something inappropriate people will never look at you the same way again.
Martin McGuinness - The fact that an ex IRA member can come out of the debate looking well, says a lot about the quality of the other candidates and their inability to actually debate!
However credit is due as it was an extremely polished performance, from the ability to really turn the screw on Sean Gallagher to his shrewd choice of words
“Their families would describe it as murder and I wouldn’t disagree with any grieving family who had to deal with that situation”. Appears to be the only candidate who wasn’t willing to let Sean stroll to success, if Sean does not win on Thursday, the eventual winner will have Martin to thank.
Sean Gallagher - Has run an extremely clever campaign, running as the business, independent candidate, even if it’s not strictly true. Very repetitive with his message and while that message is clear, for me it lacks any sincerity or emotion. Appears to be benefiting from the fact that a) he has not been a career politician and b) Fianna Fail not running a candidate. I know know the irony! As George Bush once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time....And those are the ones you want to focus on”.
Gay Mitchell - Thinks no one else knows what the role entails and assumes he should get it because he does know....did I mention he has experience of being a politician, because Gay does this frequently. Not quite grasping the fact that Irish people are sick to death of career politicians! He also slammed Pat saying the questions were irrelevant....questions which were asked by members of the public.... As Winston Churchill once said the best argument against democracy was spending five minutes with the average voter.
Micheal D Higgins - Michael has run an interesting campaign using a tactic more familiar in American politics of running as the inevitable candidate. Mitt Romney is doing something similar at the moment in his Republican primary, trying to appear above the scrapping and fighting of other candidates. Worked fairly well for him during the debate although Pat Kenny highlighted the fact that he was coming across pious. This tactic also betrays a certain amount of arrogance, particularly when he stated “If people do what they’re supposed to on Thursday I will be president”.
As a final note Pat Kenny’s quip that “they needed to earn their keep” and so we had to have a commercial break infuriated me. Firstly because we pay a TV license to RTE and two because by RTE running ads they make it an unfair marketplace for TV3. Maybe if Pat didn’t have such a massive salary we wouldn’t need to run ads, because the license fee should be enough to cover a presidential debate once every 7-14 years!
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