The Irish presidential election is becoming chaotic, desultory, pathetic farce!

Gay Mitchell is telling us that how reluctant he is to smile but that his priorities are combatting suicide and child mortality in the third world? The people of Ireland are looking for a head of state, not a drag-queen resembling Mary Magdalene parading his vanity around the globe attaching himself to issues that are beyond the scope of the mandate of the President of Ireland.  If Mitchell wants to become a missionary he needs to pursue a different path.

Is this guy really telling the Irish public that his capacity for public office is so limited and constrained that he cannot even manage to smile at them? If Mitchell performs as chaotically in this election as he is in the campaign that outcome will inflict greater damage on the party that sponsored him than it will on the candidate. What considerations entered the calculus of the Fine Gael party in July when they were choosing a candidate for the presidential election?

The vacuous, evangelical, bullshit that has been proffered about the ‘suitability’ of McGuinness without any concurrent description of what makes Gay Mitchell a compelling candidate for presidential office must bear its own message – and that, too, must be something that does not evoke a smile.

Perhaps it is better for the electorate realise before the election, rather than afterwards, that the disposition of a prospective president to smile graciously is a potential stumbling block to his capacity to relate to them as President. Mr Mitchell there is some substance in the adage – ‘smile and the world smiles with you; scowl and you scowl alone’.

The presidential election campaign by all candidates is degenerating into a pathetic and desultory chaotic farce being acted out by a posse of candidates no more qualified to be head of state that a random selection of hassled commuters at a bus stop in rush hour.

Do these people consider the electorate to be gullible buffoons as they narrate their inane stream of consciousness that is supposed to pass as a compelling case to elect them President of Ireland? The esteem of the nation is at stake and the people deserves better.