Presidential debate fails to inspire much hope

AS the presidential candidates gathered for their first set-piece debate of the campaign, one person stood out from all the others as the perfect head of state.

The poise, the intelligence, the no-nonsense empathy that would combine to make an excellent President were all on display — but unfortunately those attributes belonged to moderator Olivia O’Leary, who has ruled herself out of the race.

So, instead we were left with the lack-lustre bunch of Áras wannabes trotting out the same old self-obsessed cliches and usual self-loving eulogies.

Martin McGuinness was the only one of the five nominees missing from the line-up, organised to discuss what the presidency could do for arts and culture. It was a shame as he is keen to move on from the unpleasantness surrounding his past he could have updated Sinn Féin’s old slogan about having An Armalite In One Hand And A Ballot Box In The Other to something more touchy-feely such as: An Artist’s Easel In One Hand And A Paint Box In The Other.

Those that did turn up all soon reverted to type, with TV business pundit Sean Gallagher referring to the arts for exactly eight seconds of his five-minute oration. The rest of the talk was devoted to his campaign mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs — which is all very laudable, but absolutely nothing to do with the President’s role.

The President’s role is in fact, as Sean Moncrief cruelly but accurately observed, to perform the duties of a national catering manager for visiting dignitaries like the British Queen and Barack Obama.

So, Gallagher would be far too busy overseeing magnificent banquets and polishing the silverware to have much time to turn the Áras into a giant labour exchange or launch a national re-start programme.

Gallagher and fellow Independent Mary Davis have done remarkably well in the polls — especially considering they are both so remarkably boring.

But their only appeal was that they were not the tired faces of Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell and Labour’s Micheal D Higgins. Now that two anti-establishment candidates, David Norris and McGuinness, are in the frame, it looks like Independents’ Day is over for the dreary duo of Gallagher and Davis.

Indeed, Davis took her trademark blandness to a whole new level as she spouted on about arts being a “bright shining light of positivity”, blah, blah, blah.

Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell spent a good chunk of his allotted time banging on about his deprived childhood and humble origins again, as if this was supposed to make us feel sorry for him. But it’s FG you’ve got to feel sorry for. This was supposed to be their win, but they’ve got the wrong candidate — no wonder poor old Enda had his head in his hands when the selection convention delivered the standard bearer he didn’t want.

Michael D was the only one to make any kind of substantive point on arts policy when he riled against the lumping together of personal creativity and the corporate enterprise that is the culture “industry”.

But then the diminutive “Big D” soon got back onto his favourite subject — himself — and began name-dropping with the abandon of an inner city hoodie littering the pavement with sweet wrappers.

We were regaled with a drive-by story about how he helped The Rolling Stones get into a gallery early when he was arts minister, and he was about to launch into a long reminiscence about him and dear friend Yehudi Menuhin when Ms O’Leary pulled him up on his celebrity hugging.

Oh, Olivia — you’ve still got four days to change your mind, enter the race, and leave this not so fabulous four in your wake.