What Else Is David Norris Trying To Hide

Did you see what I done thar? Yes, I thought I deserved a little bit of headline link baiting. The image of his website is just the standard 403 error forbidden content error given out by web servers hiding folder contents. It's a nice way of approching the topic of David Norris, post presidential campaign destruction.

I never liked the idea of David Norris running for Irish President. Not because I thought he wasn't up to the job, but because I thought the job is totally pointless. We have a government with a Prime Minister position, we don't need a pseudo-monarchy head. International ambasador? Sure don't they all call themselves that when they are off on junkets anyway. No, the whole thing is a total waste of time. So I was always 50/50 on whether I would vote for Norris at election time. And now due to external circumstances, my mind has been made up: I will be simply spoiling my vote when the time comes around to it.



How does all this affect my views of Norris as a person then? Well it doesn't really, not personally anyway. I still think he's a nice guy, and a great speaker to listen to. It would be all too easy to say however that he just wrote a letter, no big deal. He wrote a letter attempting to use his political position to get a more leanient sentence for a friend guilty of statutory rape in another country. I'm afraid that's not on. Ignoring the ins and outs of the case completely, if he felt that strongly about it at the time, he should have decalred it openly and faced political suicide back then.

All that said, it's not the most damning thing ever done and it wouldn't have directly cost him the presidency. Even cretinous people like Michael Lowry and Jacky Healy Rae could get away with worse kinds of shit, but not if they were running for president. And that drags up a whole other kettle of fish about the way Presidential candidates are elected. If put to the people, Norris would probably still be elected president, just. But to get to that stage you have to jump through hoops with your peers, and they are all so corrupt they dare not bring the spotlight onto themselves by supporting a man in trouble.

It doesn't matter if all the others have done worse. It doesn't matter the details of the statutory rape case. It doesn't matter how good or bad he would have been as president. All that matters is that when it comes down to it: David Norris, like the rest of his ilk, will regretably, always be seen as politically...