A friend of mine – a very good person who is usually correct but is prone to occasional fits of overstatement – was guilty of totally misreading the news on Sunday evening. “This is the end for Higgins” he wrote on social media, responding to the news that the country’s President had falsely accused a foreign embassy of leaking what amounted to a love-letter that he had written to the new President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Of course, nothing, barring the expiry of his term of office in 13 months, will ever be the end of President Higgins as a political force.
In the space of a few hours on Sunday alone, the President had publicly contradicted the Taoiseach on immigration and housing policy, and openly indulged a conspiracy theory that the Israeli embassy was behind recent criticism of him over the aforementioned letter.
One might have expected Simon Harris, the target of half of the President’s criticism, to defend himself and his Government – instead, Harris defended Higgins, saying that he “did not know” who leaked the love-letter to Iran. The answer, if you don’t know, is that nobody leaked it: the Iranians published it themselves, presumably delighted to have unexpected praise from the President of a western country that might on paper have been expected to be hostile to a regime that systematically blinded women who dared refuse the wearing of an Islamic veil.
Senator Gerard Craughwell yesterday told this website that President Higgins had “lost the plot” – a sentiment that is, in this writer’s experience, broadly shared across those parts of the political spectrum that are to the right of say, the Labour Party.
But that sentiment does not, I think, capture the significance of the most recent intervention from the Phoenix Park. On previous occasions, the President’s entirely inappropriate interventions in politics were at least confined to expressing his well-known and predictable political views: Fidel Castro Good, Donald Trump bad, Brexit terrible, statism preferable. On this occasion, the President has veered directly into conspiracy theory: A plot against his office, orchestrated by the perfidious Israelis.
That the President is the sort of fellow who would imagine that the Mossad is out to get him is, on one level, not remotely surprising: He has always been the sort of chap who greatly overstates his own global significance and would appear to regard himself as a thorn in the side of what he imagines to be the global neo-con Zionist project. Yet, when the President is in a good mood and things are going well for him, this idea of himself is projected with some gravitas: Lovingly and painstakingly crafted speeches invoking the great leftist thinkers of yore, peppered with religious ideas and delivered with the solemnity of a man sitting on the throne of Saint Peter. It’s only when he gets ratty, or cornered, that the green-ink merchant emerges, as it did on this occasion.
The truth is that there is nothing special about Michael D. Higgins: He is simply a holder of views that are and have been widespread on the crank left for decades. He would never dare criticise Iran because ultimately, no matter what they do, the Iranians can never be the villain of the global play in the eyes of those who see the world as our President does. They can hang gay men, rape women in prison, and spread terrorism around the globe – and do all these things openly – and they will still never be anything less than a friend and ally in the battle against the true enemy, the United States. The same goes for Fidel Castro, the dictatorship in Venezuela, Vladimir Putin, and just about anyone else who has stepped into the role on the global stage once played by the Soviet Union.
A characteristic of this brand of leftism has always been the embracing of conspiracy theories, which is ironic since the Irish media and Irish Government would tend to have you believe that such thinking is the preserve solely of their opponents. In 2008, for example, during the Lisbon Treaty referendum, it was received wisdom in the Irish establishment that my old friend Declan Ganley was speaking in opposition to the treaty at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Arms industry. This was aired openly at the time by people like then Labour TD Joe Costello, who has always been close to Higgins.
In any case, Higgins is our President and will remain so until the end of his term. In the meantime, the damage he is doing to the office is incalculable: In this latest episode, he has stripped it further of its dignity. In all his previous episodes, he has consciously stripped it of its aura of impartiality and unity. Far from a special and unifying figure, the President of Ireland is just another boring old duffer who read too much Noam Chomsky in his spare time.
Really, would Sean Gallagher have been so bad?