Home Media In the Media Mentions
"Quit, Mary, the Cooing is Turning into Booing"
Written by Mary Ellen Synon   
Saturday, 18 February 2006 19:00

She just won't learn. After her appalling comments in Jeddah, President McAleese, seems determined to prove that, yes, she really is as arrogant as she appeared to be during her visit to Saudi Arabia.
   
You may remember that while she was there, surrounded by representatives of one of the most repressive regimes on earth, she was so eager to please the head-choppers and torturers of the House of Saud that she seemed to shiver like a spaniel. She assured them that Ireland “abhorred” the publication of those cartoons of Mohammed in the Danish newspaper.
  
When reporters later asked her at a press conference what she had to say to Irish people who insisted that she did not have the right to speak for them about the cartoons – there are plenty of Irish, including myself, who think that the Danish were right and Mrs McAleese was wrong – she replied, “I am the President of |Ireland and that speaks for itself.”
  
If that sounds familiar, it may be that you've already heard it from Louis XIV: “L'état, c'est moi.” I am the state.
   
The woman has to be stopped. 
  
But maybe we shouldn't blame her entirely for her vanity and arrogance. Here we have an ambitious small-town lady lawyer who got lucky with our loopy system of choosing a head of state. Suddenly she was in the Park with an on-call hairdresser and a wardrobe of suits, being sent around Ireland to be cooed at by nearly everyone.
  
Why? Because cooing is what the people were taught to do at our president when that other ambitious small-town lady lawyer, Mary Robinson, was put into the Aras by the same loopy system (or have you forgotten that far more people would have preferred the late Brian Lenihan to be president than ever wanted Mrs Robinson?).
   
The right-on, lefty “modernisers” in the press, especially the wimmin of the Irish Times, who backed Mrs Robinson ensured that news coverage of her was utterly uncritical – by which I mean more than that it was without unflattering comments. I mean that almost no one in the press corps asked the kind of questions about her behaviour or subjected her remarks to the sort of critical analysis that proper journalism demanded.
  
Then Mrs Robinson made the truly shocking decision to dump her position as Uachtaráin na hEireann when she had a chance at what one must assume she saw as a better job on a bigger stage.
   
She went off for a job in so-called human rights at that headquarters of moral corruption, the United Nations (you know, the outfit that had some of its people running a child-sex-for-food scam in war zones).
   
But even after she dumped the presidency, journalists didn't criticise her. They had neglected scepticism and criticism in their dealings with Mrs Robinson for so long that the qualities had atrophied. Journalists simply were not equipped with any vocabulary that would connect the word “president” with the word “shameful.”
  
It was into that sort of atmosphere that Mary McAleese became president. She was elected because her campaign presented her as County Down's version of Mary Robinson. She didn't stir the same frenzy among the “modernisers,” but she was all they were left with, so the cooing started again. Then the politicians arranged for Mrs McAleese to be given a second term without having to face another election.
  
That was wrong. Seven years is more than enough for anyone to serve as President, because something happens to these never-made-it-to-the-Dail politicians when they make it to the Park. They get the office confused with themselves. And since the office doesn't ask much, but their egotism asks a lot, what happens is, they start “expanding” their job. That was Mrs Robinson's great vanity. And then they start pretending to speak for Ireland. That is what Mrs McAleese is up to now.  And during each year of adulation and cooing as president, they grow worse.
   
As shameful as Mrs Robinson's decision was to leave Ireland and go to the UN, one now longs for someone to offer a job to Mrs McAleese, just to get her out. Then we could elect an all-ambition-spent, well-behaved elderly gentleman – Peter Barry would get my vote – to see out his twilight years as president. He could play golf, give small dignified parties for ambassadors in the Aras, have chats with the Council of State and sign bills passed by the Oreachtas into law. And never embarrass us.
    
But of course even if we could get the arrogant Mrs McAleese out, it is no guarantee that she would stop embarrassing us. She would probably start behaving like the ex-President Robinson, who was at it again last week, popping up to lecture the United States. She wagged her finger and told the Bush administration they should take a report rigged up by a UN committee on the prisoners at Guantanamo “seriously.” She said they ought to close the camp.
    
I asked Clifford May, the president of the neo-con Washington think-tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, what he thought of our UN-loving ex-president's proposal. “If we are going to defend ourselves against al-Qaeda and other militant Islamists who are waging jihad we will have to take prisoners,” he said. “Prisoners must be incarcerated. What would be the alternative? If not at Guantanamo, perhaps Kofi Annan would make available a few floors of the UN building in New York?”
    
I have a better idea. Lock them up in the Aras an Uachtaráin. Whoever we put in there from Camp Gitmo couldn't cause us more embarrassment than what we've got in there now.

 
SUBSCRIBE

Subscribe to Our Email Updates


SOCIAL MEDIA




FEATURED EXPERT
Dr. Michael Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is also a contributing editor at National Review Online. Previously, he served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department... more
FROM THE BLOGS
From NRO The Corner: The Two Dirty Little Secrets of the Mideast Peace Process by Benjamin Weinthal, 09/1/2010
In his desire to fast-track the peace-process negotiations between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday and Thursday in Washington, President Obama has failed to acknowledge two dirty little secrets...more

From NRO The Corner: BarackObama.ir by Dr. Michael Ledeen, 08/31/2010
Did you know that the Islamic Republic of Iran has devoted a website to President Obama'  It's mostly gossip, but there's a bit of deep thinking, mullah-style...more

From The Rosett Report: Imam Feisal Meets With UAE Mosque and Money Crowd by Claudia Rosett, 08/31/2010
As the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, continues his State Department-hosted "public diplomacy" visit to the United Arab Emirates, the glimpses of his activities over there get ever more interesting...more

OUR BLOGS
OUR FAVORITES