Sometimes less is more.
Colman Reidy – Editor-In-Chief
Let me be crystal clear from the outset: Conor McGregor should never be President of Ireland. Not now, not ever.
This is a man with a documented history of violence against women, who was found liable in a civil case for sexual assault, and who has repeatedly used his platform to spew xenophobic rhetoric against immigrants. Anyone who thinks a man who punches elderly patrons in pubs over drink refusals has the temperament to represent Ireland on the world stage needs to think again. The Áras deserves better.
But here’s where it gets interesting. While McGregor himself is patently unsuitable, his candidacy has inadvertently highlighted a provocative question: might Ireland actually benefit from a President with some degree of brain damage?
Before you rush to your keyboards to compose an outraged email, hear me out. This is about addressing a fundamental problem with our current system of governance.
Ireland’s political system has become bloated with overthinking. We have committees to discuss the committees that might someday form a working group to address the potential for establishing a framework to consider the possibility of maybe solving a problem. We cannot build, meaning the ungrateful children of our nation are housed in converted garden sheds on perfectly viable real estate in our own back gardens. The country is stifled by oppressive levels of cognition.
Perhaps a leader whose frontal lobe has been turned into a bowl of dendrite soup, just enough to cut through this paralysis, is precisely what we need.
The pioneering neurobiologist Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, whose book “Phantoms in the Brain” sits dog-eared on my bookshelf, discusses the phenomenon of “paradoxical facilitation”, where damage to one part of the brain can actually enhance function in another. Some stroke patients, for example, suddenly develop remarkable artistic abilities after damage to their left temporal lobe. What if governance works the same way? While our current ministers waste valuable cognitive resources on political correctness and “stakeholder concerns,” a leader with strategic brain damage might divert all neural power to decisive action.
Might a President with compromised impulse control sign an agreement without reading the fine print? Absolutely. Might they tell the King of Portugal what we think of his ugly wife? Without question. But in a world of diplomatic double-speak, mightn’t that be refreshing?
I’m reminded of our great GAA players who, after years of consistent blows to the head, speak with a refreshing directness that our mealy-mouthed politicians could learn from. These sporting heroes took one for the team, repeatedly, and emerged with a beautiful simplicity of thought. While our representatives laboriously craft statements designed to offend absolutely no one, a leader with traumatic encephalopathy might just blurt out exactly what needs to be said.
A president whose short-term memory has been compromised can’t hold grudges. One whose risk assessment capabilities have been diminished won’t hesitate to take bold action in times of crisis. One whose filter between thought and speech has been damaged will never lie to you. As any student of behavioral economics knows, we’ve evolved to overthink. Perhaps a little neural pruning is exactly what leadership requires in the modern age.
Of course, I’m not suggesting we go out and recruit just any punch-drunk former athlete. McGregor, as I’ve made clear, lacks the temperament, the character, and the basic human decency required for high office. His brain damage is the right idea, but attached to the wrong man.
What we need is a more refined candidate. Perhaps a former rugby international from one of the nice schools, a champion jockey who’s been thrown headfirst into Cheltenham turf one too many times times, or maybe even a humble elder hurler. Someone whose brain has been thoroughly banjaxed, but in a respectable, blue-chip, brown-leather-belt, laughs-at-the-telly, Kilmacud Crokes kind of way.
I’ve given this considerable thought, so much so that I recently purchased a medieval battle helmet at auction and, last Tuesday, after a particularly frustrating Zoom call with my investment advisor, I spent thirty minutes head-butting the exposed brick wall of my Ballsbridge townhouse while wearing said helmet. The results were inconclusive.
Consider our current political brass; calculated with every public statement seemingly focus-grouped to within an millimetre of meaning. A few years in the amateur boxing circuit might have given us a Varadkar who acted on instinct rather than polling data. The housing crisis might have been addressed with the immediacy it deserved, cutting through red tape for developers, eliminating punitive rent controls, and telling the scroungers the harsh truth about who’s really out on the streets laying brick.
The science supports my position. Studies on traumatic brain injuries show that damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex can lead to increased risk-taking behaviour and reduced emotional response to potential negative outcomes. In layman’s terms, it creates people who clearly aren’t afraid to shake things up.
Of course, sensitive souls will claim I’m being derisive to those with actual brain injuries. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m elevating them, recognising their potential as our future leaders. In the same way that myopia gave us James Joyce and tuberculosis gave us Keats, perhaps CTE will give us a president who finally addresses the loitering crime epidemic.
The truth is, Ireland gets the leaders it deserves. If we continue to elect careful, measured, neurologically intact individuals who weigh consequences and consider multiple perspectives to our largely ceremonial presidency, we’ll continue to get careful, measured, incremental speech-giving and ribbon-cutting.
Furthermore, the President can’t actually do much harm constitutionally, so why not elect someone who’ll be a good bit of fun? Imagine the moments when our scrambled-egg-headed President greets foreign dignitaries by asking if they’ve ever seen a ghost. The tourism value alone would be astronomical. Who wouldn’t want to visit the country whose Head of State challenges any ‘junkie’s bastard’ to a fight him one to one, in a bare-knuckle boxing style endeavour via a local Facebook Group? At the very least, it would make those garden parties at Áras an Uachtaráin worth attending.
So no, Conor McGregor should not be our president. But that doesn’t mean he might not have something to give us. His particular brand of brain damage, applied to someone with the right background and connections, in our highest ceremonial office? That might be exactly what this dreary little republic needs.
A Quiet Word 