Yesterday the current Irish president, Michael D. Higgins, signaled that he's going to run for another term. He'll probably be unopposed, with broad support, and no election needed. If you're not Irish, allow me to blow your mind with the state of Irish politics ...
First off, President Higgins is a Poet, and though his poetry won't be what he's remembered for, it's decent enough and makes you reflect. He writes in English and Irish (our national language). Speaking of which: every Irish president has been at least bi-lingual. Anyway ...
The Irish Presidency doesn't have executive or veto power the way the American one does. It's a soft power position, though the president can also refer bills to the supreme court for a constitutionality test, it rarely happens. The main job is to represent and inspire.
President Higgins comes from the left of Irish politics. In US terms he'd be to the left of Bernie Sanders. There's really no equivalent place on the US political spectrum. He's pro-labour, pro-social-justice, pro-immigrant, to give one example ...
back in 2006, 40 Afghani's occupied St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin demanding answers for their asylum claims. Michael D. Higgins showed up and spent hours with the occupiers and offered to represent them personally. I was there and saw him get a lot of stick for it.
His predecessor, Mary McAleese (btw: when you leave office in Ireland, you no longer use the title), came from the sort of squishy populist center of Irish politics, except that she's from the North, which is a big deal. Oh yeah, I should mention, we've had women Presidents.
Her being in the squishy-center, and maybe slightly socially conservative, *still* puts her to the left of Bernie Sanders btw. And socially conservative doesn't really map either. She's devoutly catholic, and a big advocate for Christian values ...
She's an actual church figure; she practices canon law, and she's often in Rome doing important churchy type things, and she would regard herself as an evangelist. But in Ireland that's very different ...
Firstly, in 70s, I repeat - the 70s - she was a founder and lead representative for the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform. This group led the legal challenges against criminalizing same-sex sex, amongst other things. This did not have broad support in the 70s, or 80s.
She's also a real pain in the neck of the patriarchal church Patriarchy and is a strong advocate for giving women a bigger role in the church and the priesthood. The Pope is visiting Ireland soon, and she seems to be planning to just ignore the whole visit as a sort of snub. BFD.
She also crossed a big religious divide in Ireland and took communion at the Protestant Cathedral, that'd be as symbolic for many as Trump praying at a mosque, or maybe actually praying meaningfully at all really. She's now a canon in that church, because why not.
She served for 14 years. Before her, we had Mary Robinson for 7 years. The President of Ireland has been a women for a majority of my life, and I'm old. Robinson was the *also* the lead representative for the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, after Mary McAleese.
She greatly expanded the modern soft power of the Presidency. She addressed the Parliament and used it as a sort of bully pulpit. She made women's right and equality a central issue, and she used diplomatic visits to highlight humanitarian issues.
She resigned a few months before the end of her term to go and become the UN high commissioner for human rights. This week she and her old pal Hillary Clinton spoke at Trinity in Dublin.
Again though, Robinson would be well to the left of Bernie Sanders. Though it's very hard to map Irish politics as left-right; the political alignments are much more nuanced and impacted by history.
Oh Robinson was also a strong campaigner against the 8th amendment, which prohibited abortion and was recently appealed. She was against it *at the time*. This was not broadly popular.
Big take-away: 30 years of Irish Presidents have been progressive in significant ways, supporters of the little guy, compassionate, and extremely popular in office.
A not insignificant factor is how Irish elections work. We use a ranked system. This prevents "wasting" votes, discourages divisive two-partyism, and promotes broader sort of compromise position taking.
Not one of those presidents was elected with a simple majority of first preference votes. Mary Robinson, widely regarded as our best president ever, didn't even a plurality of first preference votes!
Instead they were elected based on "transfers": 2nd and 3rd preference votes from voters whose 1st and then 2nd choices were eliminated.
We've had divisive candidates, Dana Scalon comes to mind, a former star (she sang for Ireland at the Eurovision) who ran on a platform of strong support for "traditional values". She got 2.9% of the vote.
