Well, that was \u2013 and forgive the bad language, but it is necessary \u2013 fucking awful.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason that, before she dropped out of the race due to ill health, Mairead McGuinness was the overwhelming favourite to win the Presidential election. Agree or disagree with her, she is capable media performer and a person of political substance and thought. Her withdrawal from the election has left Fine Gael with a candidate who \u2013 while an admirable person in many ways \u2013 is just a flat-footed communicator with little to no charisma.<\/p>\n
McGuinness would have crushed the opposition in this debate. So too, had she been on the ballot, would Mrs. Steen. So too, had Fianna F\u00e1il picked him, would Bertie Ahern. So too, had the left chosen better, would Brendan Howlin of the Labour Party, or Senator Tom Clonan.<\/p>\n
But as it happened in reality, on stage Heather Humphreys was joined by two other flat-footed communicators with little to no charisma.<\/p>\n
Of the three candidates, Jim Gavin was the only one to seem to have an idea what he wanted to accomplish: He seemed at least to have some original thoughts. He reminded us that he had served the country as a soldier. He showed a degree of human normality by admitting to having been an NFL fan all his life. There was an ounce of relatability at times. Charm. Normality. My suspicion is that if any genuinely undecided voter watched, many of them will have concluded he was the best of a bad lot.<\/p>\n
But my goodness, what a bad lot.<\/p>\n
Catherine Connolly is a left winger. I get that. Somebody like me is never going to agree with her. She was never going to win my vote.<\/p>\n
But that said: It\u2019s a poor day when the best the Irish left can offer us is somebody who speaks in the cadence of a 1950\u2019s Mother Superior, with the vocabulary of a 1960s student radical. Catherine does not like the Military Industrial Complex. Neither did Dwight David Eisenhower, who coined the phrase. Eisenhower, as President of the United States in 1960, was unable to do much to stop it. Catherine repeats the phrase endlessly and with great moral disapproval. The word \u201cAh-merica\u201d drips from her curled upper lip with a disdain. When she talks about housing, the words \u201cneo liberal\u201d appear fully formed in her cadence without any substantive critique.<\/p>\n
On housing, she said \u201cit is quite simple\u201d. \u201cHousing is a fundamental human right\u201d. \u201cWe need a radical re-set of housing policy\u201d. \u201cWe have the obscenity where 16,000 people are homeless\u201d. There was no solution offered. She likes using exclamatory phrases. That nun-like cadence is particularly pronounced when she utters condemnatory words \u2013 \u201cabsolute indictment\u201d. \u201cgenocide\u201d, and so on.<\/p>\n
Humphreys? If platitudes were an Olympic sport, she would be a medal hope on a global level. At one stage she told us that attacking people on the streets is wrong. She will say things like \u201cwe need more Gardai on the street\u201d and \u201cHousing is a complex problem\u201d. There was a spectacular bit of waffle around the flags on lampposts debate where she promised to \u201cbring people together\u201d and \u201chave a conversation\u201d.<\/p>\n
She could, of course, have started that conversation right there on the debate stage, but the truth is she has no idea what that conversation would consist of, so she didn\u2019t. She simply promised conversations, and lots of them. Every question was greeted with a kind of wide-eyed innocence and a nervous smile and then a few stock phrases.<\/p>\n
On a united Ireland we got \u201cwe must unite people\u201d and \u201cbuilding bridges\u201d.<\/p>\n
We did get a wonderful \u201cto be fair to the flag\u201d near the end in the context of a United Ireland. As a Monaghan man, I enjoyed that. A phrase born of the stony grey soil.<\/p>\n
Jim Gavin can do a platitude with the best of them: We got a \u201cKieran, I believe in our country\u201d near the end. And he did point a lot \u2013 those hands were never still. Here and then I felt like a Junior Hurler in the changing room, about to be told to pull hard on my man.<\/p>\n
But can I remember a single thing of substance he said? No, I cannot. But at least he seemed sort of normal.<\/p>\n
If you judged the debate on social media reactions, you might think that Connolly won. She did not. She was, in fact, awful. What she did do however was benefit from being the only candidate in the race that actually has people who can put their hands on their heart and say \u201cI think this person genuinely should be our President\u201d and not be lying to you. Her hardcore support is small, but it is true and committed. They will vote. That\u2019s going to be a big advantage, because I\u2019m not sure any other section of Irish society gives a shit about these three candidates.<\/p>\n
I will vote, but last night I made up my mind to spoil my ballot. In truth, I was leaning Humphreys before the debate \u2013 not out of love but as a vote to stop Connolly. But no: This kind of farcical treatment of the highest office in the land by our politicians cannot be rewarded with a vote, even one that is tactical in nature. I\u2019ll write someone else\u2019s name on the ballot paper. Perhaps Mrs Steen\u2019s, to protest the nomination process. Or perhaps Bono\u2019s, because he would at least be insufferable and articulate, which is better than just insufferable.<\/p>\n
This is what the political establishment has foisted upon us. The only appropriate reaction, in my view, is a middle finger in return to the one that has been given to us. If that leaves us with President, and Mother Superior, Catherine Connolly, then so be it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, that was \u2013 and forgive the bad language, but it is necessary \u2013 fucking awful. There\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[894,3656,42,2044,2043,37801,14885,43,37117,40,38,41,39,907],"class_list":{"0":"post-52512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-bertie-ahern","9":"tag-catherine-connolly","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-heather-humphreys","12":"tag-jim-gavin","13":"tag-mairead-mcguinness","14":"tag-maria-steen","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-presidential-debate","17":"tag-top-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topnews","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-virgin-media"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}