And the Winner is......

[scottycelt]

Is the Irish President any more powerful than the British Queen, both roles being largely ceremonial?

However to try and guide Patrick in the right direction over his imaginary voting dilemma, any 'insane' Irishman or lady would surely vote for the lovely and ever-radiant Dana, who is certainly not afraid to express currently unfashionable views when seeking election ... how delightfully refreshing ... she'd certainly get my mad endorsement if I were Irish, as long as she promised never to burst into song.

'Ex-terrorist' and 'gay rights activist' on a Presidential CV might well appeal much more to the better-hinged majority of the electorate these days, nonethetheless ...

[Stillhomewardbound]

Is the Irish President any more powerful than the British Queen, both roles being largely ceremonial?

What an excellent thread this is turning out to be. No, Scotty, the role is entirely constitutional as with Betty, which is why one looks for a candidate above the millee of everyday politics and one with an essntial decency. In that respect, MDH represents the kind of politician that Ireland does produce in more quanitity than it might be credited for ... intellectual, human and divorced from the clientilism that has for too long bemsirched Irish society.

Ultimately, the holder of the office must be benign but with a sheen. Imagine if you will a cheerleader past her (or his) childbearing years!

I could not have drawn a more bizarre anaology but the hour is viciously late!

Goodnight and may your god go with you!!

[Stillhomewardbound]

RECALLING DEV, THE LONG FELLA

A feature of my Dublin childhood were the horse jumping shows at the RDS (Royal Dublins Society) in Ballsbridge where we lived. Our first priority would be to bunk in (we never ever payed!) then we’d work all the exhibition stands collecting bags of bumf and freebies, badges and the like, followed by a spell listening to the Army No.1 Band before heading in to the beautiful show ground and passed the president’s box, our objective to get a glimpse of the sainted President deValera.

He was invariably sat in a heavy, black morning coat and staring ahead, myopically, through his silver rimmed spectacles looking most of his nearly ninety years. An object of great wonderment to us, it wasn’t just that he was our president, but he was Dev, the Long Fella. (I wasn’t to know then that our family were Collins folk to whom he was a despised figure).

Afterwards we’d go the back of the stand and wait for him to emerge and step into the presidential Rolls Royce which was as venerable as himself (a 1947 Silver Wraith landaulette fronted by the most enormous and impressive headlamps).

A number of years later I’d stand on the same spot and watch a beaming President Erskine Childers* emerge.

After deValera’s long and increasingly enfeebled tenure of the presidential office, Childers swept in like a breath of fresh air and revived the visibility of the office soon becoming highly popular. However, tragically, and not a little ironically, after just sixteen months in office he succumbed to a fatal heart attack while addressing the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin.

SHB


*Educated at Britten’s school, Gresham’s, incidentally

[Tapiola]

From 1981 to 1983 I went over each summer with the Troops Out delegation. I made friends with the nationalist family who had kindly accommodated me during the first trip, and in 1983 I went over a few days early to get a less regimented feel for the community. The first night of that stay I got an urgent call to go up the road to a house where my host had ventured. I took the urgency of the call too seriously and in the dark tripped on a traffic calming hump and went head first into the tarmac. It turned out that my host simply wanted me to sort out the record player at her friend's house. Anyway, they contacted the local Sinn Fein councillor who got a black taxi sorted to take me to the Royal Victoria Hospital where I spent the next few days getting my jaws wired and being otherwise checked out. On discharge I was advised to go to the Sinn Fein offices where someone (it just happened that Martin McGuinness was there at the time and I had become a minor celebrity due to the accident) would be best placed to sort out a local GP for me to see. McGuinness, after a bit of craic about what conclusions my colleagues would jump to about how I got my jaw broken in Belfast, got one of his comrades to take me round to a local doctor who sorted out the necessary prescriptions for pain killers, etc.

Bryn,

Thanks for the further details. Quite an adventure.

[Tapiola]

One notable absence though for this election.

Dustin has often declared his interest in politics. He has campaigned in two presidential elections. He competed as Dustin Hoffman in the 1997 presidential election as both forename and surname were necessary to register.[citation needed] Returning Officers received votes spoiled with his name in more recent elections. He received some support but many of those ballots were also spoiled. In his mock campaigns, he ran as a representative of "Fianna Fowl" (a play on Ireland's former largest political party Fianna Fáil)[8] and also of the 'Poultry Party'. His campaign manifestos have included promising "to bring the DART to Dingle", as well as making sure every young boy in Ireland got to go on a date with the Spice Girl of their choice (later Pussycat Doll, and Industrializing all of Ireland's rural areas, while Ruralizing everywhere else. He has recently showed interest in becoming the president of America.

He is a UNICEF ambassador

[Stillhomewardbound]

Martin McGuinness's candidacy as with Gerry Adams election to the Dail is part of their plan to position themselves as the political party of all Ireland.

Quite the pipe (bomb?!) dream.

[PatrickOD]

Although the election for President is a matter for voters in the Republic of Ireland, I was intrigued, when driving through the Bogside area today, to see dozens of posters festooning walls and lamposts. They were celebrating the candidacy of MMcG, who originally came from the area. Nice touch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Derry_Corner

[Stillhomewardbound]

Part of my alienation towards Martin McGuinness's candidature is not to do with his former career. I happen to feel that he has genuine, and what I believe will continue to be, statesmanship. However, I have no enthusiasm for the notion of a so-called 'united Ireland', which is clearly where Sinn Fein's politiking is headed.

It was one thing to reunite East and West Germany, but that was a question of untieing a four decade schism. In Northern Ireland however the routes of the Protestant community go back some three centuries and overall the province of Ulster has prospered in that time. Needless to say, I do not attempt to minimise the abuses and discrimination of the catholic community that for too long were allowed to prevail.

However, that is the history of the land and there will be no harvest from attempting to replough such established soil.

This argument (of unification), the very devilish hand mainden of the Irish Civil War itself, remains an open wound and even eighty years on I doubt that there is an appetite for it to be opened again.

***************

On a lighter note, let me revive (because I'm sure I've told it here before) one of my father's most uniquely presidential anecdotes from his fifty year career, involving not one but TWO presidents ...

By the late Fifties, Dad was an established member of Ireland's Abbey Theatre company and when President Nehru of India made a state visit to Ireland, a perfomance of one of Sean O'Casey's classic dramas was on the itinerary. Following the performance at the Queen's Theatre. President Sean T.O'Kelly (2nd president of Ireland) led his honoured guest, President Nehru on to the stage to meet the Abbey players.

Virtually the first person President O'Kelly's gaze alighted on was Dad whom he regarded with admiring, but hopelessly inebriate eyes, as he raucously beckoned, 'T.P. ... T.P.!! Come over here, son, and let me introduce ya to me old baccy ... Pandit Nehru.'

Dad's main memory was of the immaculately attired, bewhited and diminuative figure of Nehru, utterly diginfied, but helplessly shrivelled as he endured this appalling humiliation.

[PatrickOD]

'T.P. ... T.P.!! Come over here, son, and let me introduce ya to me old baccy ... Pandit Nehru.'

Dad's main memory was of the immaculately attired, bewhited and diminuative figure of Nehru, utterly diginfied, but helplessly shrivelled as he endured this appalling humiliation.

All I can say to that is 'Thank God Dustin the Turkey decided not to run', and I would hope that tact, dignity, gravitas and a bit of cop on will be qualities that the electorate will bear in mind.

I can't go along with your assessment of the Sinn Fen candidate, Shb. His former career is in itself enough to put me off. His reluctance to discuss it is in keeping with membership of a secret society, and should not be acceptable to the general public. His short fuse in interviews is not indicative of a statesmanlike demeanour.

Sinn Fein are not the only people to espouse a United Ireland - I would guess that all the other candidates share that aspiration - but they have successfully hijacked the term Republicanism. The majority of people in Ireland now recognise that a United Ireland means consent by Northern Unionists - something that I, and many other Northerners, not Unionists, have for a long time accepted. Whatever the passage of time has done to the wounds of the Civil War, it is too soon to ignore the wounds of these more recent Troubles.

[Stillhomewardbound]

I entirely hear what you are saying re McGuinness, but equally, I think I firmly emphasised how unacceptable a figure he would be to myself if I had a vote.

You're disquiet is wholly understandable but forget not that a former terrorist held the post for fourteen years (with Collin's blood on his hands, indeed).

Ireland, constitutionally, is in a difficult position. Mary Robinson, by virtue of being the republic's first female head of state was gifted considerable lese majeste to re-model the office of president. She was an attavist, an atomizer and altogether an alluring energizer in bringing new life to the office, but equally, she was a superb diplomatist with very persuasive powers, and it's possible to say that she set a very challenging path ie. being wholly above the fray, while also in it. Mary McAleese has segued marvellously, but who now has the dynanism and the wisdom to follow on.

Is it Dusty we need after all?

[PatrickOD]

Thanks, scotty, for addressing the request I made for guidance. I appreciate the gentle satirical, almost Flann O'Brienesque style of your advice!
I suspect that the result of the election, and the issues surrounding the candidates, are the last stones on your beads, but I'm hoping that as the campaign progresses items will arise that will raise hackles and/or prod responses from members. I am closer to the events than you all (or, if you don't like Americanisms, all yous), but not that much closer, and I get tangled up in old arguments, like Shb and myself are inclined to do, and miss out on what is relevant to the current topic. For that reason I give you the opportunity to follow some of what is going on by means of links like this:

http://www.irishtimes.com/topics/race-for-the-aras/

For instance, scotty, to answer your question about the powers of the President, you might find the article 'Functions must be clearly understood' of interest.

[Stillhomewardbound]

... and I get tangled up in old arguments, like Shb and myself are inclined to do ...

I'm not aware that we have locked horns particularly, POD. I'm always aware that there is another point of view. Indeed, I have very good chats with my ex-wife's partner who is a former RUC constable.

[PatrickOD]

I'm not aware that we have locked horns particularly, POD. I'm always aware that there is another point of view. Indeed, I have very good chats with my ex-wife's partner who is a former RUC constable.

We haven't, Shb. I'm just saying that certain well trod but intricate paths, with signposts like 'Collins', 'DeValera' and ' Civil War', lead away from the main road, and often end up with travellers getting lost.

Incidentally, DeValera seems to have been the kind of office holder that Mary Robinson successfully set out to replace, as you have indicated above. Hopefully the next President will be able to pick up where Mary McAleese left off, and I think all of the candidates are aware that the Presidency is not a pleasant meadow where worthy and deserving dignitaries are put out to grass.

[Stillhomewardbound]

Well, DeValera was nudged up into the park, because he was not getting the hint about it being time to move on. Also, he had no vision of a future for how the fledgling republic would prosper. His perspective was held almost entirely in the distorted rear-view mirror of Irish nationalism and that infamous 'comely maidens dancing at the crossroads' speech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ire..._We_Dreamed_Of.

Alas, revolutions tend to be the same everywhere, a frisson of independence followed by a hopeless attempt to turn back the clock.

It was Sean Lemass who took the reigns and finally set about an agenda of achieveing a modern Ireland. deValera meanwhile sat benignly, but appropriately so, in the Park (ie. the Phoenix Park where the president's residence is located, 'Aras an Uchtarain', formerly the regal lodge of the Viceroy), and wih each year garnering added folkloric value, so much so that there came a point when deValera's famed presidetial Rolls Royce (which had fallen into disrepair) might be declared a national mounment.

[PatrickOD]

Vincent Brown, on TV3 last night, held the second of the Presidential debates. By all accounts it was a stormy enough session - Vincent can have a savage ambushing technique. The programme, which I did not see, is not yet available on play again.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1005/1224305259536.html