Yes, Michael D Higgins is enormously popular. Yes, he would likely be a shoo-in for a second term. But we still MUST have a presidential race

IT’S going to be the worstkept political secret of the next 12 months – Michael D Higgins wants a second term in office, but he’s not going to say so until it’s too late for any serious challengers to emerge. If he thought that he had parked the issue by saying he’d announce his decision next autumn, he could not have been more wrong. And it is a strategy that could prove riskier than he imagines.

By failing to state his plans clearly right now, he has left open two live possibilities. The first, which nobody really believes, is that he hasn’t made up his mind yet. By appearing to dither, though, he has just guaranteed that he will be quizzed about his thought processes at every event he attends between now and September 2018, in the hope that an epiphany might be revealed.

Affection

The alternative, which everybody really believes, is that he has indeed made up his mind but is being coy and evasive for strategic reasons. Once again, this guarantees that he will spend the next 12 months fielding questions about his plans and he is going to have to find endless ways to say: ‘I’m not telling you.’

It is all going to get very tiresome, predictable and horribly undignified. It never looks good for a holder of public office to be repeatedly asked when he is leaving the stage. It is also entirely at odds with the role that Michael D has carved out for himself in the public’s affections.

And he is truly held in great affection, as this newspaper’s poll showed yesterday. He is respected and admired – but he should be wary, as he approaches the question of a second term, of taking that goodwill for granted.

Emotional honesty is the poet’s stock in trade, but coyness is kryptonite to his credibility. One of the reasons President Higgins is so popular is because he seized the liberty that came with his office, the deliverance from party-political constraints, to reveal himself with candour, trust and even vulnerability. The fact that he makes a great tea cosy is another reason, but we’ll get to that later.

There is no sense, whether you agree with his views or not, that his words come from anywhere other than his heart. He is not looking over his shoulder at a party whip, or pandering to a constituency, or jockeying for advantage against a rival.

He is sincerely and unmistakeably himself, sometimes mawkishly lyrical, sometimes unwisely impulsive, sometimes unduly partisan – but always passionate, authentic and human.

He has definitely tested the boundaries of what qualifies as political intervention – sometimes positively, on housing and inequality, and sometimes foolishly, as in his description of Fidel Castro as a ‘giant among world leaders’ – but still managed to stay ‘above politics’, as the role demands. And ‘above politics’ doesn’t mean not holding a political view or abandoning the convictions of a lifetime.

What it does mean, though, is eschewing the manoeuvring, the cute-hoor tactics, the blatant self-interest, the guile, the pragmatism, the shameless populism and the ability to talk out of both sides of your mouth that a successful political career requires in this country.

And that’s why ‘playing politics’ to win a second term, by delaying an announcement until it’s too late for anyone else to stand against him, is unedifying and undemocratic – but also unnecessary. And it could very well backfire. Back in 2011, President Higgins won 40% of the vote. According to yesterday’s poll, he would double that mandate if an election for the Áras was held right now.

But seven years is a long time for any office-holder to remain unchallenged and 14 years without an election is bordering on despotic. When he was a candidate last time, President Higgins vowed that he would not seek a second term.

Considering that the field in 2011 wasn’t the most inspiring of all time, there must have been some who voted for Michael D Higgins as the best of an unexciting lot.

There must have been others, too, who were swayed by his pledge to serve just one term in the hope that 2018 would bring new faces into the reckoning.

The latest poll suggests that he has won round many of the doubters, but nobody is entitled to discard or manipulate the democratic imperative on the certainty of their belovedness – that’s Kim Jong-un territory, and it’s not what our Constitution envisaged.

The very fact that none of the major parties wants a presidential election ought to be reason enough to demand one. And it ought to be a good enough reason for the President, as the guardian of the Constitution, to make sure we get one. And just because Michael D appears unbeatable, and the result a foregone conclusion, is a dangerous precedent for dispensing with a vote.

Last spring, Theresa May was 20 points ahead in the polls. And look how that turned out. And let’s not be having any of that old ‘the people don’t want an election’ guff. The people absolutely love an election, especially a presidential one. Unlike a general election, very little of day-to-day relevance turns on the outcome of a presidential campaign and they are infinitely more entertaining, merciless and sensational. The last one was like a cross between Killinaskully and The Hunger Games, blending moments of high drama with low farce and leaving the corpses of several political careers strewn in the dust.

Candidacy

Presidential elections flush out the grandiose ambitions and overweening self-regard of public figures who mistake our benign indifference for national treasuredom. They offer us a peerless opportunity to tell some smug worthies just what we really think.

And if there’s even the remotest possibility that Bertie Ahern might throw his hat in the ring, we cannot pass upon the chance to ask him, preferably in the middle of a live TV debate, if he can name the horse that won him all that mysterious money.

And at the end of a diverting few months, next autumn we will almost certainly end up with Michael D Higgins back in the Áras for another seven years.

And that, it seems, is what most people want. There’s a fondness for him that few politicians ever earn – he is cultured, wise and eloquent, with the soul of a bard, the undimmed passion of a student, and the squishy silhouette of a knitted tea cosy.

And, quirky as they are, those ‘Michael Tea’ cosies speak volumes. For any other politician, such merchandise would have a mocking or angry edge – witness all the Donald Trump tat you can buy in the States – but the knitted ‘Michael Tea’ captures the rare charm of a man who could, indeed, sit just as comfortably at a family supper table as a royal banquet.

If the polls are correct, then he has nothing to fear from any contenders. So there is no reason why he shouldn’t give them ample time to consider their options, plan their campaigns and take their best shot by announcing his candidacy directly.

But he will be doing a great disservice to his legacy, and his mandate, if he is seen to have bagged another term by spiking the guns of his challengers.

Right now, nobody believes he needs any clever ploys, such as delaying an announcement to thwart his rivals, to win a second term. Being seen to have pulled a stroke, though, will always leave the lingering suspicion that he might have needed it, after all.