The canny Michael D is a better politician than he is a President

Michael D mastered the speech of protest the better to deliver it from the palace balcony, writes Gerard Howlin

FRIDAY’S election is a fork in the road between Michael D Higgins’ highly managed campaign and the aspirations of his presidency. The loftiness of the latter will not survive the cunning and machination of the former. Something will be lost, and the pity is we will all be a little poorer as a result. It needn’t have been.

How things end can often be divined at the beginning. The commitment to serve one term only, offered by a candidate under pressure and prepared to do whatever was necessary, offers the clue. Michael D Higgins is an effective politician, because he has practised self-serving expediency.