The Constitution may give the president only limited powers, but few limits are set on the extra influence that a popular president can wield. Photograph: Derick Hudson/ Getty Images
Never stay too long in the studio. It’s like staying too long in the sun. You get burnt.
I learned this the hard way when asked to come on an RTÉ radio programme in 2004, when former president Mary McAleese was appointed unopposed to a second term in the Áras. Having said how she had grown into the role, how good she had been as president, I had said my piece. But the next interviewee hadn’t turned up, so I was asked to stay on. Big mistake.
Asked if there was nothing about the McAleese presidency that I disliked, I said what I should have kept to myself: that I wished, in an increasingly secular state, that she wouldn’t bring God into the conversation all the time; that she sometimes sounded like an old nun with phrases like “God willing” or “if God spares me”.
On my way out, the producer said excitedly, “the switchboard is jammers”. Producers always love it when the switchboard is jammers.
Anyway, the Irish public had rang through in t
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