‘There are no things more cruel than truths about ourselves spoken to us by another that are perceived to be at least half true.’ John McGahern wrote in his most brilliant short story ‘The Country Funeral.’
So, here’s a truth about ourselves and the Presidential election. A representative cruel truth.
It’s a disgrace. An insulting disgrace. I excuse the candidates personally from that accusation. The disgrace is not theirs. There are bigger background culprits who deserve it. Two of the three candidates were un-auditioned, very badly cast and given roles in a presidential play that they had not read through.
The role of the President of Ireland is an enormous role. It is a role of stature, culture, knowledge, communication and competence. And it is a role around something which is never mentioned, orality. And what is that you ask?
Orality is the ability to speak, to speak well, to bring a proud voice to national and international stages about who we are as a people, to interpret our national energy and pride, to highlight our language, our arts, our culture, and our enterprise and illuminate that which defines us as youth and elder. And with that same vocality, knowledge and perception, receive other nations and world leaders who present themselves in our national home as friend or foe. The President of Ireland is our vocal, cultural, creative, informed and educated representative on a world stage. We must hear them and believe in them and be proud of them and proudest of all around the quality of our choice.
That is the call and the standard.
The presidency demands all those attributes in abundance. And if we do not rise to those standards we lose the aspiration, expectation and interest of all those living representatives of our island, all those tradesmen and services, all those organisations and groups, all those workers who keep our needs met and our lives working, all those people in health and education and emergency who remain upright while imparting, giving, caring and saving us, all those on our land cultivating and heralding in the seasons with food and nourishment, the immigrant and the emigrant, the delivery man in the van stuck on the M50 and the woman with three children standing at the deserted bus stop. They matter. More than you know. If we lose their aspiration we gravely undermine who the president could be and should be, in favour of autocratic leaders who have decided who they want it to be.
‘Be not deceived, the people are not mocked.’ We are raging.
But the mockery did not begin with the unfortunate characters cast. It began some weeks ago on a smaller, more clandestine and self-satisfied stage with the autocratic democracy of our liberal directors. This directorial disaster was well flagged.
Micheál Martin organised a ‘magic show’ and when we were all ready and waiting in our seats, he produced Jim Gavin out of his magician’s hat. It’s an old Fianna Fáil ‘hey presto’ moment which worked wonders around car tax, and rates years ago, and was to work even greater magic around his new prize, Jim. ‘Jim’s my man, and he’s going to be your man,’ he told his faithful because Micheál believes in a liberal democracy and fair play but only as he interprets it.
‘We know nothing about this,’ cried the Fianna Fáil faithful, volunteers, lines men, TD’s and senators. Billy Kelleher, a cork conscience and MEP responded. ‘I’ll sort this,’ and took an aeroplane home. He tried a Jim contention and he lost, but he lost with dignity and votes. Martin the liberal longevity manager had the cover and the measure of democracy long before his plane landed, and made sure ‘Jim was still his man.’ Martin’s man Jim, completely miscast in the presidential play had no training, no costume and no proper lines to say. He exited backstage before the end of act 1.
This was the first mistake, the first weakness.
Mairead McGuinness was to be the Fine Gael president. She had wanted it for so long. She was at the starting gate able and early. Suddenly, unwell, she left the stage before the curtain went up. Fine Gael was devastated. What to do? Magic anybody? Not too good at the magic. What else?
A drive to Monaghan to convince Heather Humphreys. “I’ll be 65 next year and if I ran again I’d be nearly 70 by the end of the next Dáil term, and I’m just not physically able to keep going for that long.” Heather said in Oct 2024, deciding not to contest the general election. Will we turn back? No, we didn’t hear that, keep going.
Flattery convinced Heather she was the one for the role. Flattery, a dangerous gift and an even more dangerous acceptance may allow you to believe your personal suitability, but it was an unfair, unthought out objective casting, since their choice had no distinctive costume, no substantive lines, no inspiration beyond repetition and sincere but doggerel verse, which would falter after the curtain went up.
This was the second mistake, the second weakness.
Micheál made the decision for the entire Fianna Fáil Family. And us. All on his arrogant own. It was for our own good. No need for decision involvement. It’s done and cannot be undone. And the man in the van on the M50 was completely irrelevant. Fine Gael exercised no intelligence, no perception and no gathering to decide a list of potential candidates male or female, young or middle aged, who just might have the ability, experience, expertise, interest, passion, ideas, communication, imagination, power and language and who were not retired and happy to be so. No, no, no, they were half way back from Monaghan putting petrol in the car. So, assured of their find, they ordered their faithful not to vote for any independent candidate.
The third mistake, the third weakness.
And there were three independents evident in the race. Sheridan, Delahunty and Steen. The awkward Trinity. ‘Glamis thou art and Cawdor thou shalt be,’ Sheridan and Delahunty, but not now. Not taken seriously nor afforded a chance at a real audition they lacked guile around the twists of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael democracy movement. They knew little of the closed off routes, laneways, and boreens. They didn’t understand territory. They stood up well as youthful breaths of fresh air in under the door, outside the jaded awfulness of the liberal democracy, but found themselves floundering around trying to get a council’s attention and endorsement. They’d fade out and they did.
Maria Steen, ‘and thou shalt be King hereafter’ was a problem. A big problem. A real problem. A brilliant woman, a beautiful woman, a barrister, an architect, a Montessori teacher, a mother and wait for it, a mind. A thinking, erudite and formed mind. A wind and sun combination. Imagine. Panic. Serious panic. 17 votes from the senators and independent TDs. Who would have thought it would come to this? Decisions had to be made. The great liberal ideology became the great liberal choke. Nothing to see here. No way in here. This space is for real liberals who think like we think. That’s how we define liberal Ireland and the ‘equality of opportunity,’ think and act like we think and act. ‘She voted against same sex marriage,’ they chorused. So, what? Thousands did. But the people voted for it. And it was passed. The people decide. ‘She voted against abortion,’ a bigger chorus. So, what? The people voted for it and it was passed. The people decide. The people always decide.
Not this time. Micheál Martin decided. The bus to Monaghan decided. Senator McDowell decided and added that the subsequent election of Steen “might very well have happened” and ‘would have been divisive and a step backwards for the kind of Ireland he believed in.’ His honesty and insight were startling. Unmatched. However, might I, as a humble serf, proffer in supplication, that personal belief is not collective belief, and if we are to consider ourselves a liberal democracy with a modicum of esteem, the capacity to choose does come into it. But there is nothing like forward thinking to keep the less-than-liberals in their place. Senator McDowell was intuitive. So intuitive. He spoke his truth and did so strategically to achieve an objective. She would have won. She definitely would have won and most certainly against this field.
But she was buried in puerile, fatuous observations from the great liberati, most of them women, who by the way are protecting me from myself, I mustn’t forget that, while at the same time closing me down as a thinker and speaker and decider of my own fate. It’s the liberal way or the highway. A choice worse than the election. A new melodrama. Good God, if you believe that you will believe that all 12 stone of me is going to open a ballet school.
And so, where are we? We are nowhere. We are confused, insulted, accusative and angry, and worst of all disinterested in the finest and most qualitative job in the land. So much for the liberal democracy ringing in our ears with dubious meanings echoing out.
The C.C versus H.H contest lies quite far out from what a president should and could be. H.H is a wonderful real woman, mature and competent and beloved within her world in Monaghan, flattered into a role unsuited to her time, form, word and talent against C.C, a medieval anti-cleric in all and in everything, because ‘nothing is right until everything is right’ speaking to us in a cello mood, as though we have lost reality, most especially because reality resides and is recognised only in her suffering penitent heart.
Where to turn? We might start with the vision and quality that we get from our writers. A vision for us and about us that we have not heard from our candidates. Or did I miss it? Maybe back McGahern, who through his writing reminded us that we must pay attention, take heed, linger and reflect, on the small every-day things that come home to affect us. Words teach us to see. It was through words that McGahern saw the world. What words did we hear from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that would have helped us see a presidential potential? What presidency did they think they were envisioning and gifting to us through their backroom deciders, dictates and dealers?
The presidential election may be appealing to our ego, or even entertainment, but it should appeal to our better judgement and our sense of our ingenuity and innovation. We were denied that opportunity. What the election has become is sadly best explained in these questions:
‘Why are you voting for Catherine Connolly?’ ‘Because she’s not Heather Humphreys!’
‘Why are you voting for Heather Humphreys?’ ‘Because she’s not Catherine Connolly!’
I am so tired being told what to think and how to feel for all the wrong reasons. The van driver on the M50 and the mother of three at the deserted bus stop has more evidence of an inner moral life than what our two main political parties have offered us in this presidential election.
McGahern may have been right when he said that we had moved from a theocracy to a sort of amoral commercialism. The presidential election could be accused of a political visionless commercialism. It has not risen to any level that historians would chart as something to be inspired by or aspired to. Because of this people will not vote, people will spoil their vote, and worst of all people will vote for somebody who they do not believe in and have no expectations around outside their paid for tenancy in Áras an Uachtaráin.