Irish Examiner View: Battle of succession — the rematch
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Viewers of the media/politics HBO mega-series , and there were very many of them, will recall that it ended, this time last year, with a tumultuous election night drama being played out on, and influenced by, network television.
While the series provided an art-imitating-life backdrop to the narrative arc of the Trump presidency, it also brought a plausible and chilling insight into the US political process.
That episode was called 'America Decides' and this week the opening shots were fired in the next round of real life when incumbent president Joe Biden and Republican challenger Donald Trump agreed the dates for two live primetime debates, one on CNN on June 27 and the other on September 10 hosted by ABC News.
This is months ahead of polling day on November 5, and the earliest general election debate in modern electoral history.
It is also a breach of practice since 1987 when the presidential face-offs have been simultaneously broadcast by every major news channel.
This has been organised for 37 years by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
It was Biden’s decision to go for events sponsored by individual news outlets. And his decision to go early. He also refused to participate in a debate on the right-leaning Fox News.
This is a significant gamble by Biden who is trailing in the polls despite millions of dollars of promotional expenditure and the fact that his rival has been diverted by a criminal trial which is keeping him engaged in a courtroom for several days a week.
He and his team hope that earlier exposure to a reminder of Trump’s style will jolt voters and make them realise the consequences of changing governments in the autumn.
And his rival was quick to oblige posting on social media that Biden was “the WORST debater I have ever faced” and that he was unable to “put two sentences together.”
He also described the president as “crooked” three times.
There is some evidence to justify the Biden camp view that voters need their memories refreshed.
A poll of six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — by the , Siena College and the found that 17% of voters believed it was Biden, not Trump, who initiated the ending of constitutional right to abortion.
Biden mustered majority backing only in Wisconsin, and young and nonwhite voters appeared particularly exercised by the economy and US policies on Gaza.
By agreeing to two debates rather than the usual three, Oval Office strategists are minimising the risks of placing an 81-year-old president live onstage for 90 minutes.
By timetabling both encounters at some distance from election day the candidates have the chance to recover from any own goals.
In 2020 — the last time either candidate demonstrated their skills in open debate — Biden scored well for coolness under fire from an over-aggressive Donald Trump.
More than 73m tuned in for the first of those encounters, and more than 84m watched Trump’s debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016.
These TV battles may come to define the 2024 US election.
In a telling observation Ireland’s world-class author Colm Tóibín, a resident of California, warned that a Trump win would be even more dangerous than before.
“He’s both more unhinged and more controlled. He knows how you take the reins of government now, he isn’t on a learning curve.
So, in many areas he will move very fast, he will move very brutally, and he will have enormous control,” he said.
The last 30 years have been golden decades for Irish literature with repeated displays of the country’s creative imagination.
So, you might think it takes something very special to get the pulses racing.
And here it is, in the shape of the nationally treasured author Colm Tóibín and his eagerly awaited follow-up to the award-winning .
, published in 2009, was that rare thing, a beautifully written novel of time and place converted effortlessly into a moving and memorable film six years later.
’s heroine, Eilis, is returning in the new novel, , to tell us the second part of her story following her flight back to the US after the secret of her marriage was maliciously shared with the rest of Enniscorthy by the local nosy parker, Miss Kelly.
Tóibín is frequently asked how it is that he writes with such clarity and conviction about his female characters.
He credits this to growing up in a house full of women in his native Co Wexford, where his aunts would visit every day and talk in the front parlour with his mother and two older sisters.
His father, a teacher, died when he was 12 from a brain aneurysm.
It was here that he heard, and remembered, the inspiration for his best-loved book, the sad story of a girl returning from New York who removed her wedding band on the boat so no one would know she was going to go back forever.
Like all of his writing, it has the ring of truth.
Something is going to happen tonight which hasn’t taken place for 25 years.
And while boxing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, there are hundreds of thousands in the Republic who enjoy “the sweet science”.
For novelty value alone, the clash in Riyadh — the golden seam of professional boxing runs through Saudi Arabia rather than Madison Square Gardens these days — between Tyson Fury and Ukrainian hero Oleksandr Usyk, is unmissable.
Both men have the rare opportunity to become the unified heavyweight champion of the world for the first time since November 13, 1999, when Londoner Lennox Lewis beat Evander Holyfield in Las Vegas.
Fury, 36, is part of a pugilistic dynasty descended from a Traveller family from Tuam in Galway who moved to the Wythenshawe area of Manchester.
He was born prematurely and named after a previous undisputed heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson, because, said his father, John, of his fighting qualities.
It was John Fury who set the pace for controversy this week when he head-butted the smallest member of Usyk’s party, underlining his reputation for creating pre-bout distractions.
Tyson Fury is at an optimum fighting weight of 19 stone and has left behind the period when mental health problems led to his weight ballooning to 28 stone.
He first won the world heavyweight title by dethroning another Ukrainian, the great champion Wladimir Klitschko, in 2015.
Klitschko’s brother, Vitali, another world champion boxer, is mayor of Kyiv.
Both Klitschkos are reputed to be assassination targets for the Kremlin.
Fury likes to talk about the sport’s traditions, making references to bare-knuckle fighters and the days of the ‘Fancy’, when the rich and poor of the Regency gathered for prolonged contests in unpublicised locations.
He speaks knowledgably about the likes of ‘Gentleman Jim’ Corbett (father from Mayo), John L Sullivan (father from Kerry, mother from Athlone) and Jem Mace, nicknamed ‘The Gypsy’.
If these topics seem more in keeping with the bout between “The Game Chicken” and the “Larkey Boy” described by Charles Dickens in , there is still a contemporary taste for fighting monikers.
Fury likes to call himself ‘The Gypsy King’, while Usyk is ‘The Cat’.
Fury calculates that victory and subsequent encounters in the Middle East might make him the world’s “first £500m heavyweight boxer”.
He said this week: “I’m a prize-fighting pugilist specialist. That’s what I do. I fight for the prize, whether it be gold bars, gold coins, cash, transfers, cars, whatever you want to pay me, pay me in bags of sand for all I care, as long as I can make a drink on it, deal done.”