Park Life

What is it with the Irish presidency that makes it such a yawn-fest?

Okay, so we’re repeatedly told it’s a purely symbolic gig but surely the man or woman in the post could do a little more than open cheese festivals, stare glassy-eyed at sports they clearly view with contempt, and serve those little foil-wrapped chocolates to ambassadors from countries we’ve barely heard of and who certainly haven’t heard of us.
Why can’t we try and emulate the Yanks for a start? In the last 30 years alone, they’ve given us a procession of presidential grotesques, the kind of people without whom the world would have been a much duller, albeit somewhat less explosive, place.
For starters, there was my old mate Richard Nixon, of whom it was said that he was so congenitally crooked he had to screw his pants on every morning. Indeed, an even older mate of your Uncle Sam, revered gonzo star Hunter S. Thompson, went a little bit further, as is his wont. Tricky Dicky, he vouchsafed, was “a cheapjack punk and a lust-maddened werewolf.” HST also reckoned that the sour-faced Nixon was entirely humourless. The only think he could imagine him laughing at, Thompson said, was a disabled Democratic voter who couldn’t quite reach the lever on the voting machine.
Now there’s a role model. And, of course, nothing became Nixon quite like his departure, leaving in his wake a burglary, a slush fund, a whole heap of Republican ratfucking and more hot undercover tapes than a Dylan bootlegger could ever hope to amass.
Needless to say, the man who took over, President Ford, granted him a complete pardon. But, of course.

War On Drugs

Who else? There was Ronnie Raygun, all Hollywood swagger downstairs and bugger-all up on top. The great communicator, they called him. Right. This would be the same Reagan who, in the throes of his own war on drugs – hey, remember that? – declared that there was one crucial difference between an airline pilot who was pissed and one who was stoned: at least with the former you’d know he was drunk. That’d be a great help at 35,000 feet right enough.
Anything else? Oh yes, I nearly forgot. Ronnie has been credited with the death of communism. Yes, and all those silly people on the streets of Berlin and Prague and Bucharest and Moscow – mere Hollywood extras, the lot of them.
Then along came George Bush Senior. And that’s enough about him.
My man Bubba restored some real class to the White House, hanging with Bono, ending 700 years of war in Ireland, blowing into a saxophone and doing interesting things with a cigar and Monica Lewinsky in what became, overnight, the Oral Office. Not since JFK was there such a full-on hammer man in the White House, making the Clinton era a highwater mark for those of us who like our presidential politics hot, well-done and with a bit on the side.
Which brings us to George The Younger who generally only has to say ‘howdy’ to have the entire world on its back, arms and legs in the air, laughing hysterically. Or, alternatively, dodging missiles. With John Kerry looking about as formidable a challenger as Nemo the fish – well, no, not that formidable – the only hope is that Dubya will go back on the sauce, or the marching powder, or preferably both, and blow it all with some fantastically wild public display of drunken buffoonery. But how will we be able to tell?
Now, compare that lot with some of the ones we’ve had in our own little White House. Dev was only around for about 250 years and yet if it wasn’t for that nifty movie about Michael Collins sure we’d hardly remember him at all. That bit where he dressed up as an oul wan – great.
Paddy Hillery? Don’t start me on Paddy Hillery. So crushingly bland was his time in the Aras that he once held a press conference to say that nothing was happening. True. There were rumours going around about the man’s private life, not that the great unwashed knew anything about them since the media hadn’t gone anywhere near the allegations, but Paddy called the hacks up to the Phoenix Park anyway to tell them that, well, that there was nothing to report. And that was that.

Dancing President

Obviously, Red Robbo put a bit of zip into proceedings for a while but that whole ‘Dancing President’ riff wore thin pretty quickly and with Mary M. we’ve basically gotten more of the same but without such a heavy emphasis on jitterbugging.
Look, no-one is more concerned about nature than Sam – environmental as anything, that’s me – but surely we can do better than to put a little Green man up against Mother Mary. Sam has been approached, of course, but like Bono, I’m not prepared to downsize when it comes to property.
All that said, I’m sure you’d all be sick with excitement at the prospect of a presidential election. Indeed, the only thing more exciting would be if there wasn’t a presidential election at all.

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort esq