Random schoolchildren would have made a better case for themselves
‘There are two kinds of people in this world; winners and losers. Inside each of every one of you, at the very core of your being, is a winner waiting to be awakened and unleashed upon the world.’
The opening scenes of Little Miss Sunshine show the character Richard Hoover, a striving motivational speaker and life coach, delivering a bold presentation to a half-empty lecture theatre.
It’s the type of dross that for some is empowering, and for others is just that: dross. What that type of rhetoric attempts to instil is a sense of grandeur and purpose into those who think self-belief is a force bigger than anything including talent, skill or ability.
After a farcical nomination campaign, we are now down to the achingly slow final stages
I’ve been thinking about those opening lines a lot while watching the presidential campaign unfold, although truthfully, I’ve been doing everything I can to avoid this campaign, which has to be a low point in contemporary Irish politics.
Why is this campaign so terrible? Why are most of the candidates of such low calibre given the actual calibre of our presidents? The obvious answer is that anyone can see Michael D Higgins will win (if people get out and vote, of course).
If people do vote in decent numbers, it is hard to see anything other than a landslide for Higgins. Therefore, anyone with genuine aspirations for the presidency will hold their whist until they’re actually in with a shot in seven years’ time. But you can’t ignore things forever, so on Saturday I finally bit the bullet and listened to a presidential “debate” on RTÉ Radio 1.
Dear God. If you picked a number of schoolchildren at random, they would have made a better case for themselves. After a farcical nomination campaign, we are now down to the achingly slow final stages, where we have to listen to random businessmen – the Richard Hoovers of this world – assert themselves with an arrogance that is breathtaking.
There’s Joan Freeman, who founded Pieta House. Well done. At least she’s done something of note. She has also claimed…
