It is already midsummer, yet no presidential candidate has declared for an election which is about four months away (unless you count Conor McGregor and Peter Casey). Is this a crisis?
So far, the prospect of a rather nice job – quarter-of-a-million euro salary, fully staffed des res and front-of-house seats everywhere accompanied by standing ovations – has been marked by expressions of no or fleeting interest.
Sadly, then, there will be no Michael McDowell, Jarlath Burns, Barry Andrews, Heather Humphreys or Frances Fitzgerald to kick around for months on end. Independent Ireland says it has “done a lot of talking” about nominating a runner. Aontú is “actively considering” it. So is Sinn Féin, though it will probably be an agreed independent candidate, ie one kept at arm’s length lest disaster strikes again.
Mairead McGuinness, the current favourite in a speculative field, said she would make a decision by May. That was in early April.
So far nobody wants the Presidency and its quarter-of-a-million euro salary. Why?
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“I’m trying to see the whites of Bertie’s eyes there, but I just can’t see them. So if you wink, I’ll wink, Bertie. Is that a deal?” she said to fellow panellist Bertie Ahern on RTÉ.
And Bertie? With Barry Andrews out of the running, the famously cunning one may well be pondering how a more forgiving generation has allowed Sinn Féin to detach itself from the past and whether it might offer the same indulgence to peace process Bertie.
Even in the depths of a Fianna Fáil-led recession in 2011, his sunny optimism about the presidential job and his popularity remained untarnished. Two months before the election he said he would have “done all right” as a candidate but for the decline in the Fianna Fáil party’s popularity, the “downturn” and “all the hassle of the tribunals”. Not much to contend with, so.
But the problem for any plucky outside contenders is it can take that Bertie-style tunnel vision, grit, cunning and a steely imperviousness to gross insults to get a win.
The paradox of the presidency is the ambassadorial degree of protocol and judgment required of the actual job versus the epic levels of dirty politics that is sometimes required to get there. It may be an entertaining blood sport, but the potential for lasting personal devastation for candidates is real.
Candidates aren’t led by depressives, as Labour’s organising force, Senator Pat Magner, put it in 1997 when the party’s candidate, Adi Roche, slipped from first to third in the polls just a few weeks into a shambolic launch. What he meant was campaigns need unabashed optimists.
Roche, a political newbie, had only stepped in about six weeks before the election – which suggests that leaving it too late can be as damaging as getting in too early.
For two years after the campaign carnage and repeated hits of organised lies and smears against her and her family, Roche – founder of the Chernobyl Children’s Project and an idealistic, energetic environmentalist – felt unable to walk down her native city’s main street. As she subsequently said: “I was drowning inside. It destroyed me.”
The crazy 2011 campaign, with an unprecedented seven candidates, fought in a deep recession replete with exposés, dropouts and fake Twitter accounts seems like a magic mushroom trip at this distance.
At one point Gay Byrne actively considered the Fianna Fáil bait when he was ahead at 28 per cent in a poll of prospective candidates, with Michael D Higgins at 21 per cent. An eternal what-if moment occurred when Seamus Heaney agreed to consider a Fine Gael invitation via Phil Hogan, but decided against unless there was to be an agreed, cross-party candidate. Then Bertie put the hex on Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell by saying he was a shoo-in if the party ran a good campaign, since Fine Gael was on 40 per cent.
Then with four days to polling, entrepreneur Seán Gallagher was streaking ahead at 40 per cent in the polls when he was derailed on live TV by rival candidate Martin McGuinness and a fake tweet. Political veteran Higgins, trailing in the mid to high 20s, was there to catch the head-melted voters.
Pace the adorable Miggeldy persona, replete with tea cosies and huggable dogs, no cuddly political naif succeeds to the Áras.
It is remarkable now to look back and see how Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson, both 46 at inauguration, were said to have “come from nowhere”.
A key point for any plucky 2025 contenders is that this was always a ridiculous suggestion. Both were law professors, barristers and hardened campaign veterans with unsuccessful Dáil runs behind them.
By the time Robinson ran for president, she had been a councillor, long-serving senator and renowned senior counsel in profoundly important cases of public interest.
By the age of 24, McAleese had been appointed Reid professor of criminal law at Trinity College Dublin and later became the first woman pro-vice chancellor of Queen’s University with a stint of current affairs journalism at RTÉ thrown in.
When McAleese was accused of being a “tribal time bomb” and Robinson of having “a newfound interest in the family” during their campaigns, it was shocking but not surprising. Both were accustomed to smears, lies and dirty tricks. And both served the office with distinction and creativity.
In which case it might be argued that all the campaign savagery simply proves that the system works: it’s how the self-deluded, the inexperienced and the fantasists are weeded out.
But the danger is that the process, much like regular politics, proves too toxic and distasteful for truly interesting candidates, for the what-ifs such as Seamus Heaney or Fintan O’Toole.
More than four months to go. There’s still time.
