Mick Clifford: Who will be Ireland’s next president? The potential candidates so far
Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Would Micheál Martin be comfortable with dusty tribunal skeletons being hauled through every town and village during a preseidential campaign?
And how’re you fixed? Roll up, roll up, if you have anything at all in your locker that might make a good president, now’s the time to put in a spake or forever hold your whist. The names are beginning to come thick and fast for the race scheduled to occur in October.
This week there were two biggies. Michael McDowell is being whispered as a possible candidate from a joint FF/FG bid. Alternatively, he could emerge as a rallying cry for those looking for somebody on the right. That’s the Irish right, which is about 2cm away from the centre-left. He would certainly promise a lively campaign.
The second name coughed out this week was Joe Brolly. He does have the political currency of an All-Ireland medal, albeit only one as Pat Spillane used to remind him. He also has a beef or two, and these days in politics right across the globe there is a fashion whereby a candidate who projects a big beef attracts the disaffected voters. Joe could end up back on The Sunday Game, this time both presenting and punditering, a one man show broadcast from a fireside in the Áras.
So who are the major runners and riders at a time when any realistic candidate would want to be limbering up? Let’s first examine the kind of attributes that might be required for this office that appears to redefine itself every so often.
To a large extent, the presidency appears to embody who we would like to think we are. The government, and by extension, the Dáil, reflects who we really are. They operate in the world of real politic, marrying their constituents’ values and priorities with, to use the great term of Irish politics, delivering. The president, by contrast, doesn’t have to deliver diddly squat, permitting he or she to float above dirty reality as a paragon of best of us.
So it was with the current incumbent. Nobody ever said he’d have made a great taoiseach and many suggested any such notion would be a mirthless joke. But he has excelled in purveying the aspirational spirit of the nation. He is a man of the left in a state that appears reluctant to vote in a left wing government. He is a poet, a man of high culture on an island that punches above its weight with talent yet underfunds the arts.
He knows the correct knife and fork with which to attack a feed at a banquet and you won’t find him skulling sneaky pints in the back bar of some function room. He can talk for Ireland, sometimes above the heads of his audience, but more often verbally extending a hand to those at the furthest reaches from power. Follow that.
The first potential candidate is former taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Unfortunately for him, the past may not even be past. Back in 1997, the then taoiseach famously shafted Albert Reynolds when the former taoiseach was seeking the Fianna Fáil nomination. By all accounts Bertie felt — probably correctly — that Albert just wouldn’t win the election. So he organised for a few of his henchmen to big up Mary McAleese, who got the party nomination and won the presidency.
Does Micheál Martin believe that Bertie could win? Would the current Taoiseach be comfortable with dusty tribunal skeletons being hauled through every town and village during a campaign?
The smart money still says no, but what does the smart money know?
The smart money is whispering that there are three possible Fine Gael candidates, Heather Humphreys, Frances Fitzgerald, and Mairead McGuinness. All are competent and versed in politics even if none is a published poet. Humphreys, a Protestant from a border county with a warm personality, would seem to be the best bet. However, Fine Gael has been in executive power for fourteen years. Do we want one of their flagbearers running the Áras as well?
On the left, or what passes for the left, there is talk of an agreed candidate. The name of the independent TD Catherine Connolly has been mentioned. She ticks a whole book of boxes. She might have a few questions posed about some of her forays throughout her career, most notably a trip to Assad’s Syria in the company of others. She might also be asked to reveal whom exactly she believes is “warmongering” as she mentioned on TV this week. Still, if you’re looking for a value bet, maybe park it here.
Another possible candidate thrown into the mix of late is that of journalist Fintan O’Toole. He would certainly appear to have plenty of the credentials right across a spectrum of areas. Were he to throw a hat in the ring as an agreed candidate of the left, he may have a problem in winning over Sinn Féin. O’Toole has never been behind the door in calling out the party’s past association with violence and some of that persuasion have long memories. columnist Fergus Finlay is from the same political neighbourhood as O’Toole and could possibly emerge from a pack.
One other name that has been just murmured at this stage is that of Susan McKay. The current press ombudsman is a former journalist, was involved in setting up the Belfast rape crisis centre, and has written a number of books about the North. She was born a Protestant but would be entirely acceptable to the Shinners, a background that would go to her credit at a time when constitutional change might be in the air.
A final name that is apparently the subject of speculative thoughts on the left is that of Brendan Howlin.
Beyond that, there are no others in the mix right now. If form is anything to go by, some prospective candidates are quietly beavering away out there, tending to the first shoots of a plan, seeking soundings. Candidates are also running out of time before they must step out into the public square.
One warning for all who would be president. As with 1990, 1997, and 2011, this fight will probably be really dirty, with the added bulldozer of social media to potentially plunge things into ugliness. Don your psychic helmet, get togged out in spaceman protective gear and, if you’ve ever had an inclination to string a few lines into a poem or two, get writing. Beyond that, if you have anything that could under any circumstances be termed dodgy in your past, best to kill all the witnesses now. Whomever lands in the big house in the Park next November will have earned their corn.
