Michael D and politics: crossing the line as the clock ticks down on his presidency

If part of the purpose of the presidency is to serve as a unifying national force, it was not the best week for Michael D Higgins in Áras an Uachtaráin.

In a bombshell interview in last weekend’s Business Post, he issued direct criticisms of a Government initiative to discuss the future of security policy, warned that the country was drifting towards Nato and made caustic personal remarks about a distinguished academic asked by the Government to chair the events.

It didn’t so much approach the line into politics that presidents are supposed to be wary of, as – in the words of one long-time senior official – “launch a blitzkrieg across it”.

The President’s intervention polarised opinion, with many people backing him for seeking to protect Ireland’s traditional neutrality, but others, including many people in Government, believing that his criticisms were overdone. Or, more commonly, that he was gravely mistaken in making them in the first place.

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The reaction within Government was a mixture of anger and surprise. The President has many times skirted the line which demarcates the role of the President – he is supposed to be above politics, by common consent and precedent – from the mud-wrestling of politics. The Presidency’s status as being above politics – and therefore immune to criticism or challenge within politics – depends on him not becoming embroiled in it. If he chooses to do so, he not only dispenses with the protections and privileges that precedent has afforded the President; he fundamentally redefines its relationship with the executive. That would be quite the move.

Even some of Higgins’ friends and supporters – who spoke to The Irish Times frankly but privately this week – were horrified by his remarks about Prof Louise Richardson

Perhaps mindful of all this, he has always been careful not to cross the line, and even when he probably did cross it, he gave himself plausible deniability by speaking in general, or sometimes pan-European terms – criticising, for example, the Europe-wide doctrine of austerity after the financial crisis, rather that the local application of it by the then Fine Gael-Labour government.

In fact, Higgins seemed to enjoy testing the line, telling Irish Times journalist Sally Hayden during an interview in Sierra Leone in recent months that he knew exactly where it was.

“I have it quite worked out,” he told Hayden.

Mistaken

There was no such subtlety on display this week.

“I think he needs to reflect where the line is,” says Professor Kevin Rafter of DCU, who has edited a book on the presidency.

In fact, the President himself acknowledged that he was mistaken in one respect, issuing an apology for his comments about Prof Louise Richardson, the Oxford University and Harvard academic who is chairing the forums on security policy. He had, it seemed to many people, sneered at Richardson’s award of Dame of the British Empire.

“And the person who’s in charge of this is a person with a very large DBE – Dame of the British Empire,” he told Barry Whyte of the Business Post. “I think it’s grand, but you know I think there were a few candidates I would have come up with myself.”

Even some of Higgins’ friends and supporters – who spoke to The Irish Times frankly but privately this week – were horrified by his remarks about Richardson.

“The tone of it; it was contemptuous and cranky and personal. That was new coming from him. It wasn’t statesmanlike, which he prides himself on,” said one friend and admirer.

“Louise Richardson was made a DBE because she ensured that the AstraZeneca vaccine was made available at cost to poor countries, and because she increased participation at Oxford for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. What was he at? Edna O’Brien is a DBE. Sally Mulready is a DBE and he put her on the Council of State!”

The source went on to say that friends of Michael D – as everyone calls him – love, admire and respect him. “But we can also be infuriated by him.”

North-South relations

Higgins’s focus on Richardson’s DBE also caught the attention of people in Government concerned with building relations with unionists.

“What does that say to unionists? They regard a DBE as a high honour. And Michael D is ridiculing it,” says one person involved.

Several people around Government spoke caustically about Higgins’ contributions to North-South relations, and specifically to outreach to unionists. This is a hangover from his refusal to attend an event in Armagh in 2021, organised by the churches in the North, which marked the centenary of the foundation of Northern Ireland.

Higgins declined to go, apparently uneasy with an event that commemorated partition, despite the enthusiastic support of the Government. It was a clear breach in relations between the Áras and Government Buildings, where there is still a residual soreness about it.

After Mary McAleese’s bridge-building presidency spent so much time and energy concentrating on relations with the North, Higgins has been more concerned with this State, and the wider world

“Armagh was an outrage,” said one Government source.

Others take a more rounded view. They say that his stewardship of the decade of commemorations just concluded was deft, deep, sensitive and well-judged in the main. Many will find it hard to argue with that.

But it is also fair to say that it was very much focused on the Republic, and did little to enthuse unionists. After Mary McAleese’s bridge-building presidency spent so much time and energy concentrating on relations with the North, Higgins has been more concerned with this State, and the wider world.

Pushing on

For someone who thinks so carefully about these things, it is not credible to believe that Higgins blundered over the line this week by mistake.

So why did he do it?

Among critics, friends and critical friends, there was a common explanation this week: he’s pushing on. He is now in the last phase of his presidency, and he wants to do and say some things before he goes.

When he first ran in 2011, Higgins said he would be a one-term president. But he was re-elected in a landslide in 2018, reflecting not just his personal popularity but the widespread sense that he had done a good job in the role. Much of the second term, however, was monstered by Covid. And now time is running out to build a legacy.

“We’re into the last lap,” says one academic who has known him for many years. “And that’s the end of it. That’s the end of more than 50 years. He’s got to be thinking about that.”

“The clock is ticking,” says another friend.

Life in the Áras continues. It’s garden party season at the moment, though the President’s press team declines to release guest lists.

“He’s in great form, though some of the entertainment was questionable,” recalls one recent attendee. “Sabina gave us about 20 minutes of Seán O’Casey on the Citizens’ Army.”

In the photos on the Áras website, everyone looks delighted.

Fizzes with ideas

He still fizzes with ideas and is impatient to do things, and spoke at length this week about refugees dying in the Mediterranean, “which has received very little media coverage in Ireland,” complains the Áras. But he can hardly be expected to have the energy he did when he began in 2011.

“I don’t know how anyone could do his schedule at his age,” says one friend.

In response to questions, the Áras supplies a lengthy list of his engagements – likely to be 34 of them this month, the highest so far this year.

‘He sees the reign is coming to an end,’ says a pal, deliberately and mischievously poking fun at him by using the royal term

“Clearly, these figures only capture the President’s public events and do not include the significant day-to-day which work the President carries out in terms of considering legislation; researching and preparing speeches, articles and other publications; correspondence; following national and international events; and other activities,” says the Áras.

There is a discernible sensitivity to the suggestion of a slowdown. Back in 2014, though, the President’s office told The Irish Times that he was doing 500 engagements of one kind or another a year. That sort of workload would surely be unsustainable for a man of 82.

Two sources who know him well agree with the view that his legacy is weighing on his mind.

“He sees the reign is coming to an end,” says a pal, deliberately and mischievously poking fun at him by using the royal term.

“Look, we were lucky, and we are lucky, to have him. But he’d old and he’s tired,” says another, who has seen him recently.

Others think that will be a recipe for further forays across the line supposed to separate president from politics.

“He’ll have to be careful now,” says Rafter. “But we could see more argy bargy with the Government.”