Mary McAleese has dismantled the office of President established by her immediate predecessor.
Seven more years of the céad míle fáiltes, bodhráns at the Áras and interminable tedium is more than we can endure. Anyone is preferable: Dana, Tom McGurk, the Rose of Tralee, Slab Murphy, Twink, Seán Doherty, John Waters. She has to go.
Mary Robinson gave life to an anonymously ceremonial office. The Constitution had sought to ring-fence the presidency from public engagement and controversy. Dexterously, she gave life to the role. She did it by campaigning for the office as a left-wing, liberal feminist. It gave her a mandate. She used the office to highlight injustice. Her frequent use of the phrase "there are no inevitable victims" became a theme. She signalled her support for the divorce referendum and other causes, without crossing the constitutional ring-fence.
As the historian Diarmuid Ferriter writes in a forthcoming book: "The fact that she was edgy - and indeed sustained that edginess for seven years - is noteworthy . . . she pricked consciences at home and abroad; about emigration, human rights and the treatment of minorities, about genocide and famine in Africa, about the hypocrisy of speaking out of both sides of our mouths to the republican movement and the victims of violence."
That is gone now. Far from "consolidating" that edginess Mary Robinson brought to the presidency, Mary McAleese has restored the blandness that previously enveloped the role. She has been a Fianna Fáil President, operating within the consensus, non-confrontational, unchallenging, except in the safest of ways. All smiles, hugs, responsibility and ponderousness.
Yes, there was that kerfuffle over Communion in Christ Church and the speech about binge drinking. But that's been it. Just look at the last seven speeches posted on the Áras website.
She spoke at the European Parliament on November 19th last. She said: "This Parliament gives power to the hugely diverse voices of the men, women and young people of Europe." ("Young people"?) She said the Parliament "demonstrates the central place of democratic politics in the Union". OK, you wouldn't expect her to express a coded misgiving about democracy in the EU as Robbo would have done, but to claim the opposite?
There was the usual gibberish about how the EU rescued Europe from centuries of conflict (so predictable and, incidentally, absolute nonsense). Something or other was "awesome". She thought "credit should be given where credit was due". She wanted a reference to God in the new EU Constitution. She observed "ours is an increasingly interdependent world". There were pieties about AIDS and famine in Africa and, at the end, an Irish seanfhocal: "Ní neart go cur le chéile."
It would give you the heeby geebies. Do we really want someone who would inflict this balderdash, even on EU parliamentarians, to be our first citizen for another seven years?
Not a hint of reservation about EU trade policy, no mention of "fortress Europe", no hesitancy about the primacy of the market which the EU represents? Robbo wouldn't have copped out with an unrevised script from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Maca spoke at Dublin City Hall on Holocaust Memorial Day on January 25th last. An opportunity to say - or, given the constitutional niceties, to hint - that there is a lot of bogus hand-ringing about the genocide of the Jews nowadays and at the same time a studied denial of new genocides in Yugoslavia and Africa. Ireland joined others in denying the evidence of our own eyes in Bosnia and Rwanda and, worse still, in depriving the Bosnian Muslims of the means to defend themselves. Robbo would have had a dig at that. Maca, nothing.
There was an affectionate tribute to Maurice Hayes on February 16th. Another tribute to award winners on February 23rd and praise "to each and every person . . ."
On March 17th happy St Patrick's Day greetings to "Ireland's sons and daughters". "Around the world, on this day, we come together to celebrate the music and song, the wit and humour, the friendship and fellowship that is our heritage and pride." Please, please, not another seven years.
Off to Argentina a day or two later to do her bit for the Celtic Tiger. Robbo would have had a cut at the impoverishment of Argentina at the behest of the IMF. Maca was plugging Irish trade; not a word about the IMF. On to Chile a few days later, more plugging of the Celtic Tiger, at enormous length (3,041 words). Robbo would have made some reference to the Pinochet years. Maca, not a word.
I wrote earlier in this column that she had restored the blandness that previously enveloped the presidency. That was unfair. Unfair to Paddy Hillery, to Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, to Erskine Childers, Éamon de Valera, Seán T. O'Kelly and Douglas Hyde.
They were never as bland and insipid as this. They didn't turn the Áras into a centre of anaesthesiology. She has to go.