The sprint for the Áras has only just ended, but RTÉ has already knocked together a rough draft of the gaff-filled campaign with President Connolly: How the Race Was Won (RTÉ One, 9.35pm).
This zippy film isn’t quite the hagiography of Connolly that the title might suggest. It correctly identifies the real story as the staggering incompetence of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who managed to botch things to the point where a dark horse from the leftier end of the left could waltz into the big house in the Phoenix Park.
You could play it to political consultants across the world: behold the idiot’s guide to running an idiotic presidential campaign.
Nothing here will change viewers’ views about any of the candidates. It is particularly striking to be reminded of the rabbit-in-the-headlights aura of former Dublin football manager and supposed tactical genius Jim Gavin when he was questioned about money he owed to a tenant who had overpaid their rent a decade-and-a-half earlier. As he stood, open-mouthed and wide-eyed before the media, it was like seeing the Wizard of Oz step out from behind his curtain and fall flat on his face.
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President Connolly – How the Race Was Won: Striking reminder of botched presidential campaign
There are some omissions – for instance, we hear nothing about the disgraceful sectarianism directed at Heather Humphrey on social media. Otherwise, this is an effective recap of the campaigns. Fly-on-the-wall footage of Connolly whizzing about the country gives a sense of the momentum at her back – though you wonder why the producers didn’t use more of this material and present the film as an insider scoop on her run for the Áras.
The scenes are revealing: in one, she explains how her philosopher sister sends her quotes from Jesus and Cicero. With a dry laugh, Connolly points out that both met a sticky end at the hands of their detractors.
There is a flash of humour here that was not always evident during the future President’s run for the Áras, and it might have been useful to see more of it. But having decided not to do so, the film instead bounces around between talking heads, including various academics and reporters.
We also see how Connolly’s advisers adopted the Donald Trump strategy of focusing on podcasts, which allowed her to connect with younger voters and to deal with flattering hosts lobbing softball questions.
But above all, this is a story of how Connolly – a TD of nine years’ standing – became an outsider candidate, and how the establishment did what Irish politicians are so good at: made a mess of a straightforward process for selecting a plausible alternative.
“Were we watching the future president of Ireland?” recalls RTÉ reporter Barry Lenihan of Connolly’s first press conference. “If you were putting money on it at that stage, you probably weren’t.” But we were – and that was the twist ending that, as recently as last summer, nobody saw coming.
