I was watching the Democrat debates on Tuesday night when I came across a Guardian article challenging the portrayal in the UK of Leo Varadkar as impressively statesmanlike and intense[1]. To be fair to them, it’s not just the UK that has Leo wrong; every Irish person abroad has had, at one stage or another, to explain that no, our young, gay Taoiseach of immigrant stock isn’t a charismatic force for social justice and progressivism; he’s just kinda crap. Indeed, the article provided the most apt description of Leo Varadkar ever, “he is regarded as wishy-washy and quite boring – the rare example of being both wet and dry”[2]. Yep, that’s pretty much it. When I turned back to the tele though there was Elizabeth Warren berating her Democratic colleagues for their narrowness of vision, their lack of ambition. I was so struck by the contrast between Varadkar and Warren (who, herself, is no Obama). I was also struck by how foreign it was to me to see a political debate structured around ideas rather than arguments on who was best qualified to keep the ship steady. We don’t expect visionary thinking from our elected representatives in Ireland and it’s time we did. It’s time to add ‘must have aspirations for the area and ideas for the future of the nation’ to the job description for those who seek our votes. Fuck potholes, give me proclamations!
As our reverence of the 1916 Proclamation shows, we’re not averse to aspirational thinking. It’s not like visionaries are unelectable in Ireland; we’ve been electing them as president for since 1990. I’m reading Bernie Sanders’ book, Where We Go From Here; Two Years in the Resistance (or, ‘I’m Having Another Crack at It for 2020, Don’t Forget Me’) and who should pop up on page 86 only the bould Michael D. !
While in Dublin, we also had the opportunity to meet with the president of the country, Michael D. Higgins, a poet, philosopher and strong progressive, in his beautiful official residence in Phoenix Park. While there, I gave him a copy of my new book, and he gave me a copy of his. We had a great discussion about almost every subject under the sun
Bernie Sanders,Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance, p.86
I bet he did! Every subject under the sun? I’d well believe it! And what Bernie doesn’t know is that Michael D. inspired in young people a fervor and belief in political figures that we had forgotten was possible. When I was listening to younger Democrats talking of the ‘trauma’ of Hillary losing in 2016 I kind of rolled my eyes because, really? ‘Trauma’? Come on now, who really cares that much? But I’d forgotten myself; Christ above, if anyone had beaten Michael D. in 2018, I’d have taken to the bed for weeks. I imagine the same could be said for progressives in 1990 if Brian Lenihan had beaten Mary Robinson; smelling salts, chocolates and romcoms for the country please. In Ireland we elect excellent presidents. We do so because they inspire us; they articulate visions of the Ireland we want but haven’t the words to describe. And their ideals can lift us; when the country was in shit around 2012 and 2013, I remember thinking ‘well, at least we’ve Michael D.’ – to me, he was a symbol of our ability to get something right when it looked like we’d fucked everything up.
The ideals of America are part of the day-to-day discourse here – Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, pursuit of happiness, all men created equal, the American dream. The Declaration of Independence is a vision document, setting out the ideals of the nation they were trying to get off the ground. When US presidential elections come around every four years, fine-tuning or honing those aspirations and how they might be achieved is the very foundation of any candidacy. We’re not so big into that in Ireland. Even in presidential elections, candidates’ ideas and innovations are rarely reported on, unless it’s with derision. Ideas about society, culture and the nation’s ideals are treated as little more than a nuisance in our general elections and as a result, it’s the parties who promise to keep the ship steadiest that win elections. As one of several objectives, keeping the ship steady is a noble endeavour but it should not be the sole aim or ambition. If it is the sole ambition, then we’re just running to stand still and going nowhere. The last Taoiseach who had a vision for Ireland that extended beyond ship-steadying was Garret Fitzgerald, whose ideal was an Ireland that could hold its own in Europe and further afield, and a country where all its various traditions felt equally welcome and cherished. It’s high time we had another visionary in the Taoiseach’s office.
So, what to do? Firstly, subscribe to the Learn Out Loud podcast and get thee some positive American political rhetoric in your diet. Get a sense of what we could have, what we might come to expect. Ireland may be tiny, but we have eleven Nobel Laureates, there is talent in our genes! Secondly, we have got to reform the Seanad as a forum for the hammering out of ideas by the skilled and talented citizens we all elect, and thus are invested in. In the US, members of the House of Representatives are proportionally elected and tend to do the more day-to-day stuff[3] and then senators do the slightly different but no less important work of assisting the President in foreign policy, ratifying or rejecting treaties approved by the President and confirm nominations of Cabinet Members, Ambassadors and Federal Judges. The system is a recognition that elected representatives of districts cannot be expected to do everything, as we expect TDs to. A fit-for-purpose Seanad would lessen the load of TDs while drastically upping our creative and innovative output. Lastly, local government needs to be reformed and given actual powers so that TD’s can spend less time on pressing for the rewiring of St. Gobnait’s school or ghost estates in Longford and more time considering solutions to the very roots of these problems.
People will scoff at increased aspirational thinking, at visions of Ireland and greater disucssion of ideals (they always do). The scoff is a relatively normal reaction to our own apathy or inertia being called out. It’s far easier to roll the eyes to heaven at someone evoking the cherishing of all the children of the nation equally than it is to examine our shortcomings on a given front. The ideamongers don’t always get it right; there’s a lot in the Proclamation that I’ll pass on thank you very much but the alternative to sitting up and listening is standing still. Whatever about America, Ireland spent long enough standing still. It’s time to be inspired.
It’s time to expect more.
[1] The Guardian, 30 July 2019, ‘Leo Varadkar looks like an adult because the UK is acting like a spoilt toddler’
[2] ibid
[3] Members of the House of Representatives are elected proportionate to a state’s population, i.e. California with a population of nearly 40 million has 59 representatives, but Wyoming with a population of less that 600,000 has 8. Every state, regardless of size elects two senators.
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