Although the counting continues, it seems that Michael D. Higgins will soon be announced as the winner of the Irish presidential election.
I’m delighted about that: I gave him my own vote yesterday. I think he was by far the most presidential of the candidates. Also, he was the only one who didn’t seem to have any skeletons in his closet.
I must say that Mary McAleese is a very hard act to follow. She was terrific president and accomplished a great deal during her two terms (the visit of the British monarch being the crowning achievement, if you’ll excuse the pun). And indeed her predecessor, Mary Robinson, also did a fantastic job. As I looked at the list of candidates in the polling booth yesterday, I wasn’t sure than anyone there would be able to follow their lead. But perhaps Michael will prove me wrong.
From the very beginning there were three candidates that I did not want to win.
The first of these was Mary Davis. Firstly, we could not have three Marys in a row occupying the highest position in the land! Secondly before I knew anything else about her (other than her name) I knew that she saw nothing wrong in photoshopping her election posters. What put the “tin hat” on it for me was discovering that Fianna Fáil had appointed her to enough boards to have her labelled the “Quango Queen”.
The second was Seán Gallagher. I have no interest in seeing a minor celebrity from a reality TV show being turned in the president. He is too young and has achieved too little. And he was always associated too closely with Fianna Fáil and the Celtic Tiger for my liking. And that was before his spectacular fall from grace of earlier in the week (the “envelope” incident on The Frontline programme).
And the third was Dana Rosemary Scallon. Dana’s strong religious and conservative views would not be to my liking and this would be sufficient on its own to ensure that I would not want her as president. And then there were skeletons that were rattling around in her closet. In her case the “tin hat” for me was her implication that her tyre blowing out was some kind of assassination attempt. Unbridled paranoia. Not presidential material, I’m afraid.
Before I finish up I want to say one more thing about Seán Gallagher. Analysts say that he was winning on Sunday and lost on Thursday because of what happened on The Frontline on Monday. And that was the major factor, of course. But I don’t think we should underestimate the difference between responding to a poll and actually standing in a polling both preparing to cast a vote in a presidential election. When I stood in the polling booth looking at the pictures of the candidates I was asking myself which of them I would be proud to see as president of this country. And it was obvious to me (as it would have been to others I imagine) that Seán was not that person.