Take me to your Leader!? : Who will be the presidents of the EU?!
national |
eu |
opinion/analysis 
Wednesday September 09, 2009 17:22
by ludopath
On the 21st of March, 1953 a cartoon appeared inthe "New Yorker" by the Scottish cartoonist Ale Graham which showed one UFO, one horse in a field, two extra-terrestials with the caption take me to your leader . The rest is history. In the list of possibly apocryphal quotations of Henry Kissenger (history has been rewritten since he started out) is included the question who do I call for Europe
It is quite mind numbingly appalling for me as an Irish migrant to Europe to read not bit of coverage of the Isbon Treaty which doesn't not include comment on who are the candidates to take the Big Job of Permanent President of the European Council
The only sustained reference to the job in Irish Media came along with the either myopic or trully ominous catch phrase "first EU president". As if there would never be another chance for promotion. Ireland was enthralled by Bertie Ahern's hints that before Mahon and losing Lisbon he would as the hand at the tiller through EU Expansion stand some odds for the job. The then prime minister of Denmark was of course favourite with the bookies at that turn in the long race for
the one and only big new job in the Lisbon Treaty - = - our future uber-president.
The Danish bloke got the top job in NATO so unless he hops throguh the head hunting knowledge economy hoops in time he probably won't be our President for at least one term yet.
Luxembourger Herr Juncker is so familiar to our conversation that his campaign perhaps one of the longset running is still a relative favourite to make the hurdle for the first President or at least a latter term should he still be interested.
The Spanish Gonzales yesterday in a short interview with the Financial Times on video finally put end to sustained speculation that he was in the running for first job. He of course is heading up a Eurothinktank o nthe period 2010 to 2020 at the moment so considering his personal hobby of keeping bonsai trees with his other priorities, he's still in the running.
The darkest horse in the field with ET and their UFO and the sci-fi verbal quote diamond of the 20th century is of course Chancellor Angela Merckel of Germany who as a political leader managed to hold a colation together of the two main parties (one like Labour the other like the Tories) dspite the fact that not even those who voted for either party had been asked before hand did their vote imply a preferance for who would win. Nobody told the Germans they were getting the equivalent of a coaltion of FF with FG and Lab. and the Greens and the PDs of both past and present.
I didn't even touch the name of Tony ________