{"id":104877,"date":"2025-10-06T07:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T07:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104877\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T07:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T07:42:08","slug":"our-system-risks-presidential-farce-in-the-belief-common-sense-will-prevail-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104877\/","title":{"rendered":"Our system risks presidential farce, in the belief common sense will prevail \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, you do have to wonder about democracy. Winston Churchill<\/a> is quoted as saying it was \u201cthe worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time \u2026\u201d. Not his most pithy phrase.<\/p>\n

Democracy gave us Hitler, and Netanyahu, and Trump. Twice! And it gave us 15 would-be presidents<\/a> of Ireland at a county council meeting I attended last month. Not one received a nomination, and proper order too!<\/p>\n

Included was an activist of \u201cthe motherhood, apple pie, peace and love the poor\u201d variety. She should have been at the Rose of Tralee. Another detailed his sad mental health history, which, it might be suggested, is necessary in anyone entering public life these days. Yet another was so hard of hearing all questions had to be repeated in his ear by the Cathaoirleach. <\/p>\n

One woman\u2019s strongest pitch was her firm belief she \u201cwould be an excellent president\u201d, while another insisted councillors ignore the bad things said about her, indicating they should, well, \u201c … accentuate the positive\/eliminate the negative\u201d.<\/p>\n

Best of all was the would-be-president who utterly lost her cool as her online presentation clashed with another she had arranged for a separate county council. \u201cThe whole country needs to look at this,\u201d she said. Eventually, she calmed down and spoke about \u201cdignity in our democracy\u201d. <\/p>\n

A separate online candidate had to be shut down as, against guidelines, he repeatedly named public figures in connection with his favourite grievances and despite repeated warnings from the Cathaoirleach.<\/p>\n

Our democracy dictates that every Tom, Dick and Harriet, many with immense delusions of grandeur, should be allowed take the council route towards nomination for the presidency. On paper this is laudable, in practice it can be a farce, better suited to good comedy or satire than the serious business of selecting a head of state. <\/p>\n

On the plus side it was also democracy that delivered the relevant county councillors in last year\u2019s local elections. Their sanity, courtesy and patience was impressive before this parade of would-be \u201cprimus inter pares\u201d of us all, not least their polite applause for contenders at the end of each presentation, however ludicrous. <\/p>\n

Such good manners and sound judgement on their part was also a credit to those who elected them in 2024.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Irish Times view on presidential nominations: Too narrow a fieldOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Democracy, <\/b>from Greek d\u0113mokratia for \u201cgovernment by the people\u201d. <\/p>\n

inaword@irishtimes.com <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes, you do have to wonder about democracy. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying it was \u201cthe worst…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[51262,6222,9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,59,7,8,52258,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-104877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-adolf-hitler","9":"tag-binyamin-netanyahu","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-breakingnews","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-presidential-election","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-winston-churchill","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}