Michael Moynihan: We've never had a president from Cork and Tommy Tiernan is to blame
Everybody is backing into the limelight when it comes to becoming president, it seems
The scene: yesterday morning, yours truly getting his morning coffee.
“Hello,” says I. “A latte please.”
“Look,” says the very nice lady who makes the lattes. “Am I thinking about it? I am of course. It would be a huge honour, let’s be honest. The ultimate for any Irish person.
“But right now I have enough to be doing and I’m very focused on that, and only that. If I were to be thinking of something else right now it’d be unfair. All I’m thinking of is your latte. That’s my focus.”
There was a short pause. Then I paid and said thanks and left in a hurry.
Later in the morning, I was going into the post office to get stamps and I held the door open for a gentleman coming out against me.
“Thanks,” he said. “I have nothing but respect for the office, and I have to say the incumbent has been a credit to all of us.
“In terms of what I might bring personally, I think I have a deep connection with what the Irish people truly believe, and if I were approached I’d have to give it some serious consideration. It’s a demanding position because the eyes of the country are on you. The eyes of the world, really, because...”
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “But I have to get a move on.”
“Same as myself,” he said. “Take it handy.”
This business of Michael D Higgins’s replacement is now getting out of hand. Everybody is backing into the limelight when it comes to becoming president, it seems. I don’t begrudge the random strangers who made their pitches to me this week because the field is already pretty crowded.
I’m not exaggerating.
A couple of weeks back Eurovision winner Linda Martin, speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s show, said she was “mulling it over” and joked with her host: “In future, you should address me as Lady President.” Then she got into character, adding: “I’m saying nothing at all. That’s all I’m saying. You’ll have to wait and see now.”
Linda was the soul of discretion in comparison with TV architect Hugh Wallace three weeks ago. Asked by one of the Sunday papers directly if he would run, he said: “My mother always told me not to get ideas above my station.
“What I will say is that it’s a job that would require a great degree of empathy, a role that requires someone who can deal with every type of person. That would suit me, but I am sure there are many others who are far more qualified ...
“I’d quite like to live in the Áras, and wander out in the mornings to pet a deer. Wouldn’t that be something?” Elsewhere in the last fortnight, Galway Bay FM reported Galway West TD Catherine Connolly as saying “if there was a chance to unite the opposition”, then she would keep an open mind on running for president, while another politician was less committal in January. Bertie Ahern was quoted by the as saying: “We’ll see. Some of the names around, you wouldn’t know who they are . . . But there’s some good people.”
Conversely, GAA president Jarlath Burns addressed suggestions that Sinn Féin were considering him as a presidential candidate head-on, telling this paper: “Let me do that very clearly, that is not on my radar.”
It’s vaguely disappointing when someone doesn’t perform the appropriate dance steps, but at least it thins the field out. A little.
There's an exquisitely calibrated level of self-regard on show with anyone who is in the market for the Áras, a careful balance of modesty (false) and ambition (overpowering).
I want to appeal to the little people because they have the votes , but I need the support of the big shots who can put me in play; I have the common touch but I’ll also use the right fork when the snobs land on; I’m self-deprecating. But I also have presence.
I feel I must point out there that we have never had a president from Cork, which might seem a little strange at first glance. My own favourite theory, on the basis that someone must be blamed for this, is that Tommy Tiernan’s comedy routine about having a Leesider as president (“I’m the president of Ireland, but more importantly, I’m from Cork”) has barred the way for all of us for the foreseeable future.
The next question might appear to be obvious, then — do we a president from Cork? — but I have a more pressing request.
Do we need a president Cork?
At the risk of sounding like a secessionist in the US South around 1859, we need some strong leadership and direction in these parts. The city is clogged with traffic, crumbling in dereliction, mired in antisocial behaviour, neglected in terms of infrastructure, lopsided in its development, poorly served by its administrators, and isolated from central decision-making. There have been mutterings about having a directly elected mayor, but we surely have more ambition than that.
And I have the ideal candidate.
A new book, , gives a rundown of Keir Starmer’s electoral success in Britain, and his early days as prime minister. The most significant figure in the narrative is not Mr Starmer, though. It’s a man from Macroom.
Morgan McSweeney is the Labour strategist who masterminded Starmer’s rise to the top. He is now the prime minister’s chief of staff, one of the most powerful people in Britain, and living proof of the old saying about his hometown: that it is truly the town that never reared a fool.
The book is a good one — keep the eyes open for a review here shortly, even if Cork readers may wobble slightly at the reference to a “hurl” in Macroom in the first few pages (Patrick, Gabriel, I’m for consultation purposes).
In their wide-ranging press tour, the two authors have paid tribute to McSweeney’s political skills, unsurprisingly.
The authors point out, for instance, that McSweeney outflanked the far right in his Lambeth stomping ground when he realised they were disseminating their message through people who meet a lot of people in their work, from hairdressers to barmen to cabbies. By recruiting those groups to his cause McSweeney maintained Labour’s power in Lambeth.
Would he be able to mind Cork? That would truly be senior hurling. I’d be happy to drop into Downing Street to sound him out, though the relative size of the challenge might be off-putting for him.
Restoring Cork to its proper station would be a far more daunting proposition than ousting the Tories after 14 years in power, after all.
