Presidential elections - It’s time for candidates to be specific

THE list of Republicans hoping to unseat president Barack Obama next year grew longer yesterday when former senator Rick Santorum announced his intention to elbow his way into an increasingly crowded field of Pennsylvania Avenue aspirants.

Already former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former house speaker Newt Gingrich, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, US representative Ron Paul, and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, a former American ambassador to China, have declared their candidacy. Texas governor Rick Perry and congresswoman Michele Bachmann have expressed an interest but have not made a firm declaration.

And then there’s Sarah.

Though she has not yet declared that she will stand, and it is not at all certain she would get the Republican nomination should she wish to, 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s shadow falls over the entire process. Whether she is committed to her new, lucrative media career or is using it as a launch pad for the White House remains to be seen. Derided and admired, though hardly in equal measure, the former governor of Alaska has inspired supporters, especially in the Tea Party movement, but embarrassed very many Americans who imagine their democracy to be the very embodiment of that philosophy.

Whether you could vote for her or not, it is hard to imagine that President Obama would not relish the prospect of campaigning against her. Republicans may not look forward to the prospect of a televised debate between Ms Palin and President Obama.

Just as some Republicans would like to distance their party from Ms Palin, Democratic power brokers would be thrilled if President Obama could get the kind of welcome he got in Dublin more or less anywhere in the US. The Irish, and to a lesser degree, the European perception of President Obama as a liberal, successful social democrat is not as widely shared across the US. He is as often as not seen as a president who dramatically increased the country’s debt burden, the president who forced through unwelcome health funding reforms and a president who is struggling to rejuvenate their economy and make a meaningful impact on the country’s 8.7% unemployment rate — Ireland’s is 14.8%.

There are many in the US who suggest that his re-election is not at all assured, a view that would not have found much support in College Green some weeks ago. Unemployment rates are not the only criteria that separate our two very different societies.

Though we will, according to the current script, elect a new president long before the US goes to the polls, the differences between the two offices could hardly be more pronounced. One leads a superpower, the other is mostly a symbolic head of state in a tiny, almost bankrupt country but, as the last two incumbents have shown, the office can be a force for great good too.

Sarah Palin may be able to stay sitting on the fence for some time yet but it is time that anyone serious about succeeding President Mary McAleese explained their ambitions and proposals for the office in detail.