Soon after his inauguration in 2011, Michael D Higgins said he would seek to make his tenure a “presidency of ideas”. His ambition was honourable – and vital. How well has it been delivered and communicated? What difference has that made?
As he put it in his 2016 collection of presidential speeches, When Ideas Matter: Speeches for an Ethical Republic, “words are a great gift. They are all the power that some people, and often entire peoples and classes, have. To be given the opportunity to offer a critique of current circumstances, with their threats and their possibilities, is a great privilege.”
That notion of critique has been central to the Higgins presidency, in its negative and positive senses. It draws on his philosophical, sociological and literary backgrounds as well as his political one.
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