Well, it’s only 1290 days (give or take a month) until we have to elect them, so why not start now?
When I arrived home earlier, Mum was already in full swing. “Did you see the Late Late last night?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Did you see Liz O’Donnell on it? Very good about that stuff in Liberia.”
“Yeah, was quite impressed, I must say.”
“I reckon she’ll run for President.” She said it almost as if we were having a long-running row and she was trying to be vindictive.
“Eh… maybe. Though she’d need the PD nomination and Adrian Hardiman from the Supreme Court bench will probably get it.”
“Oh, really?” And that was pretty much it.
Then cut to my mum’s parents visiting us earlier this evening. It turns out my Grandad is a little more dyed-in-the-wool as an FFer than I would have thought. He went off on an (admittedly logical) rant about how if Bertie had lodged £15k into his account, the statements would have showed up that he’d lodged £15k, and not the IR£16,500-odd that that probably would have converted into. He’s right - if you lodge $100 in the bank, your statement will say you lodged $100 USD, and then give the conversion rate before putting the credit in the right column. According to Grandad the statements only list the IR£ lodgements - begging the question as to why you would convert it just to lodge it, or whether he maybe got it converted in Manchester before returning. Either way, despite the tangent about how “the tribunal was set up to cover planning; how is Bertie’s back accounts anything to do with planning?!”, we eventually hit the same subject again.
“Sure if there’s nothing in Europe before then, he’ll end up as President anyway, sure.”
Enter Mum: “I dunno about that, I think if his bib is dirtied at all he won’t get it.”
And then me. “Nah. To be honest there’s too many people in Fianna Fáil who’ve been biding their time, getting everything ready for ages, and waiting in the background, for Bertie to just decide he wants a better job once he’s not in the Dáil any more.”
Which I thought was a fair point. Then Mum pipes in with her Liz O’Donnell again, and then I recall how when Ciara came back from Brussels she was convinced Brian Crowley MEP would be a great choice and was almost being groomed for the job.
Then I recalled Mary Davis, who was involved in Special Olympics and who addressed us at USI Congress last year as a keynote speaker. Easily flaggable as an option - and then there’s Senator Mary White (at least I think that’s her name - not a great sign if she’s not known by everyone) who’s already declared her interest.
There was Bob Geldof! Maybe even Gerry Adams! And who, pray tell, would get the FG nomination?!
It’s a weird one. But who needs Obama or Clinton when you’ve got a whole three-and-a-half years left of the McAleeses and the world is getting electoral itchy feet?!
