The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Mary White (no not the Green Party TD, the other one, the Fianna Fáil Senator) announced to a non-too expectant world the news that she “intends seeking her party’s nomination to contest the next presidential election in 2011″

Her qualifications for the position?

“I know I would be a good candidate and a very good President,” said Ms White, who is now in her second term as a senator.

And the reason for her – perhaps undue – haste in putting herself forward?

Ms White told The Irish Times yesterday that while the election was some time away she knew from experience that it took a lot of hard graft to become a party candidate, and that any election took a long time to win.

Indeed. As the Times noted: If elected to the position she will be the third woman President in a row named Mary. Truly our paper of record.

Her range of political interests is, she believes, central to her quest for the nomination.

The 63-year-old senator pointed out that during her period in the Seanad she had focused on drawing up policies to deal with the issues of childcare, the problems faced by older peoples and suicide prevention.

And she makes a modish lash against the Tiger in that way people do when they have no particular ideological perspective (or rather they do, but it ain’t of the left) and therefore wind up criticising in a nebulous fashion:

“The Celtic Tiger has fostered an aggressive culture. People’s success is being judged by how much money they have made. I want to focus on developing a more caring society by looking at the problems faced by younger and older people.

“I want us to retain our Irish courtesy and welcome for people with an emphasis on our gentle and compassionate side rather than on aggression and individualism. I started out in business in the 1980s, during an economic depression, in an effort to create jobs and hope.”

For her there is a role model already in situ in the Aras.

She said the President, Mary McAleese, had made the theme of her presidency the building of bridges in the North.

“I would like to focus on the creation of a more caring society that looked after the vulnerable people who currently feel left out.”

Somewhat bizarrely she offered the near-irrelevant information that ‘her husband, businessman and former IDA chief Padraic White, was fully behind her bid for the nomination’

Good stuff. That’s settled then!

Still, the thought strikes me that really shouldn’t someone else ask her first? I mean ambition is admirable, but… a certain reserve or humility is no harm either. And while starting a successful company that makes chocolates is no mean feat this far from the Alps it seems to me that it might demand a certain something extra to be really right for the post of President.

Talking about treating her candidacy ’seriously’, over on Irish Election Mick Taft has an informative piece on just why she might face questions for other reasons…