You can keep the presidency, there’s no way I could be ‘happier’ than thou

ON THIS page, last week, Ivan Yates briefly and facetiously included my name in a list of women to be considered as nominees for the presidency before deciding — as he would — that to put a third woman in Áras an Uachtaráin would be excessive and it was time the job reverted to the male side of the population.

It was the nearest I’ll ever get to the Áras. In theory, I should be cutting out the column, flattening it under glass and making sure anybody mentioning me in despatches adds the thrilling “was suggested as a potential presidential candidate by a former government minister in 2009”. In reality, Ivan and his suggestion are drying out in my garage, the newspaper in which they appeared having been first soaked in rainwater, then scrunched into a papier-mâché briquette. Once Mr Yates and his suggestion are less soggy, into the fire they’ll go, which is right and proper.

Because nobody ever suggested me as a possibility before Ivan did, I hadn’t realised until last week how much I would hate to be president. Being president of Ireland has all the disadvantages of a politician, including having to get elected, with all the best bits taken away.

Getting elected is bad enough. Because when a candidate is put forward for the presidency, their entire extended family and personal history, including the nature of the breakup with former boyfriends/girlfriends, is open for discussion. (Not that I’d be afraid of scandalous accounts of my earlier love life. I’d be afraid of mortifying accounts of its paucity.)

But even if you could get through the electoral process, it wouldn’t be worth it. Yes, you get a timeshare use of a lovely house, but you have to split it with a bunch of staff and you can’t knock down walls and remodel it. Worse, as president, you don’t even have the illusion of power, the way politicians do. Or did, until the recession struck and the junior ministers started lining up for execution, thereby suggesting they’d never done anything very effective in the first place.

Politics is assumed to be like the food pyramid with ministers at the top, deciding policy and changing lives, and county councillors at the bottom, shouting and roaring random insults in an effort to get into the next edition of their local paper.

The reality, of course, is that for the first six months after a human becomes a cabinet minister, they’re distracted from the impotence of their position by photo opportunities, launches and parties to celebrate their accession.

After that, the grim appreciation comes home to roost that no ministerial decision actually turns into measurable action unless a) the entire cabinet agrees, b) the civil service is enthusiastic about implementing it, d) in present circumstances, it costs no money, e) it’s not unconstitutional, f) the wind is in the right direction g) the Force is with you.

Even when all of the above are in place, external circumstances can intervene — remember John Gormley’s light bulb initiative that got switched off by the EU.

Real influence and freedom in politics paradoxically lives at the bottom of the pyramid, with the councillor on the local authority. The most effective politician I have ever watched in action is a councillor in Athlone named Boxer Moran. He got pulled out of a meeting I was chairing, and when it became clear that no decision was going to get made in his absence, I adjourned the session and went looking for him. I found him outside in a field, walking up and down (because otherwise he’d have frozen in position) using three phones simultaneously. He was making connections, creating possibilities, closing deals, preventing feeding frenzies and changing lives, all by himself through force of personality, connectedness, understanding of how a multiplicity of systems work, and sheer bloody energy.

None of that is possible if you’re president. Instead of possibilities, you’re surrounded by constraints. You can’t swear. You can’t get fat. You can’t tell Vincent Brown to get stuffed. You can’t even leave the country without asking Brian Cowen’s permission. Instead, you face an endless schedule of pointless formalities, not least of them getting dolled up to greet incoming ambassadors and take their formal papers from them. You might hope for one of those exciting moments when a taoiseach comes knocking on the front door to tell you he (or, some day, she) can’t continue to govern, but how often does that happen?

If you try to make yourself genuinely efficacious on behalf of the nation, as Mary McAleese has by trying to build bridges between North and South, you get some twit like that unionist at the weekend, complaining about the cost of her “expensive jaunts” to the North.

THE worst aspect of being president is the unspoken requirement that the holder of the role will have no moods. As an ordinary citizen of the state, your civil rights include permission to be in a bad temper, to be “not speaking” to half the neighbourhood or family, to be on an irrational high, to be grimly hungover or to be socially silly at a high volume. Once you become president, that permission is withdrawn.

As president, you have to demonstrate unbroken and dignified good humour. Smile, and smile, and be a president…

The contrast between the role of taoiseach and Uachtarán is profound, in mood terms. Brian Cowen is allowed to be grumpy. He may be criticised for looking sulky or surly, but nobody suggests he’s thereby breaching the terms of his contract. Indeed, when — as last week — he goes a bit upbeat, the change in mood is such a contrast with the norm, it’s greeted as the harbinger of improvement on all fronts: economic, social, climate and national morale. Once you’ve established a pattern of reading from a script while looking as if someone stole your bun, talking without a script looking as if they’d given your bun back becomes a national talking-point.

But there’s the presidential rub. As president, you’re never allowed to let on that someone stole your bun. Our current president and her husband, from the outset, have presented a continuum of benign positivity that should get them into the Guinness Book of Records.

Whenever I’ve met Mary McAleese (there’s name-dropping for you. It’s been twice, and both by accident) she has behaved as if encountering me has lifted a weight off her shoulders, put a spring in her step and a song in her heart. Which is really very sweet and admirable, but must be such a pain in the — well, such a pain, when behind it all, she must want to say “Lady, I don’t know you from a hole in the floor. You don’t need to know me and I don’t need to know you, so buzz off home, would you, and let me get back to the Áras to put my feet up?”

Like Tom Daschle, but without admitting wrongdoing, I hereby formally withdraw my name from consideration for high office. Whooo, the relief.