Europe’s ‘weakest presidency’ needs a strong candidate

WAKING up at the end of a week that teased us with a whiff of excitement in the presidential race, we’re left with that empty feeling described in the opening line of Samuel Beckett’s novel Murphy: “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

A lot has happened, in a meaningless way, and everything stays the same. Like Murphy in the novel’s opening scene, trussed up in a rocking chair he “works up to a maximum rock”, there is a sense of purposeless purpose about the looming election. There is nothing new in the race since it got under way in the early summer, and nothing new at all in the politicians’ approach to the presidency.

Their ceremonial flick through the RTÉ Guide to find a candidate on whose fame they could piggy-pack to win the election seems at an end. The independent TDs and senators, who had backed the most popular candidate, David Norris, have accepted they will not put anyone forward, after little success with an unimaginative wishlist that included news-reader Sharon Ni Bheoláin.