Is Berties PR machine really powerful enough to pull this off?

Anyone running against him is going to make sure people are reminded of some of his quotes from back in the day. There are enough quotes from him that are in the public domain, but not necessarily remembered/known by everyone.

I don't necessarily have an issue with the financial crash during his tenure (which I am sure he will distance himself from) or the peace deal(which he is claiming credit for) but the ways in which he treated the public at the time in relation to naysayers and moreso that he thought it was acceptable not to have a Bank account etc etc.....this things won't be forgotten and I'd reckon we will see the alternative PR machine get these narratives back up and running.

While certain media outlets will be happy to let Bertie swan around avoiding the tough questions his fellow presidential candidates certainly won't. If he does enter, his chances will be decimated after the first presidential debate.

Pat kenny is only short of kissing his hole on Newstalk. Disgraceful stuff. The man, like Haughey should have been before the courts and not some mickey mouse tribunal.

i don’t think I ever called Haughey “Charles” - but I still knew he was a shyster.

What done for Norris also is that he pulled out of the race only to re-enter it. Showing that his judgement was questionable on that count as well as the decision to write the letter, the letter didn’t proffer support, it asked for clemency it was also written on parliamentary headed notepaper which is amazingly poor judgement.

so three examples of absolute dreadful decision making. Two examples are of borderline skullduggery. Never liked the cut of the man’s gib. Always keen for a photo op and a few minutes in front of a camera but I doubt he has the qualities, savvy or substance to do the job.

Bertie can win it… he is well regarded on the international stage, a quietly yet forcefully respected diplomat on the international stage… his achievements far outweigh his failures…

so I’d say the requirements for a PR machine might be overstated, the CV is quite padded with success. Like him or not, those be facts.

Fianna Fáil's share of the vote has nearly halved since the crash in 2008. Prior to that there was only 2 general elections since the 1930's where they dipped below 40% and that was only just - 39.1% and 39.3%. In 2011 they got 17.5%, 24.3% in 2016 and 22.2% the last time around.

No ff'er is going to be the next President. Especially not one who was the architect of Ireland being among the most severely affected countries in the global crisis. People haven't forgotten.

Its now or never for Bertie.

He has made a big push to have some sort of cherrypicked personality back in the media in time for the anniversary of the GFA with the objective of seeing if he can carry that goodwill into the 2025 presidential ‘race’ and whats interesting is that Leo has all but endorsed him while MM must have given his approval to allow him back into FF.

The danger here is that presidents have been elected with as little as 600k votes in the recent past and thats an attainable target for him.

What will be interesting is the candidates that FFG allow to run against him from within their own party, he might have enough pull within the party to run un-opposed from FFG leaving a small pool of candidates from opposition political circles and whatever crawls out of the private sector woodwork.

There'd be a chance of redemption for him if he'd ever owned up to his responsibilty for his time as Taoiseach. But his public comments since show an unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of the situation. That, or he's genuinely deluded and has no idea. I don't know which quality I loathe more. From what I've seen, he's never accepted any criticism of his tenure. He's always responded with bluster and finger-pointing.

It was eleven years and he only wants people to focus on something he achieved in his first year. It doesn't say much about his accomplishments in the other ten years. His term amounted to an eighth of the state's existence at the time he scurried away. He played a key role in shaping Ireland as it moved into the 21st century. He should also be held responsible for the calibre of the cabinet he left in his wake who had to pick up the pieces. We were left with Cowen and the likes of Coughlan, O'Dea and O'Donoughue to lead a country not even a year into a Government cycle. Nobody voted for Cowen to be Taoiseach but Bertie left us with potentially four years of him leading us.

The Bertie persona was just like Bojo or Trump, a public facade to win people over and convince them he was their pal, a lovable, down-to-earth person of the people. He'd love to be Preisdent: all the media exposure and shaking heads and no need to explain himself.

The personality contest aspect of the Presidential election, as opposed to having to actually have a programme when running for the Dail, gives him a decent chance. We've seen how well Gallagher and Casey and various senators can do in Presidential elections, though it never transfers into getting elected to the Dail.

As a serious politician, he's finished but I fear there's enough people out there who can be fooled into thinking he's some kind of respected elder statesman who'll do a good job at representing us on the international stage.

Some of it is just due to laziness and certain figures having relatively distinctive first names. People refer to Varadkar as "Leo" because others will know who they are talking about and it is easier to say and spell than "Varadkar".

See also Bertie, Enda, Charlie, Garret, Albert but less so with Brian, Micheal, Liam etc.

Anyway, I do agree with the point that people should not refer to politicians by their first names. It introduces a human and colloquial aspect to the interaction which can then be used to the politician's advantage "ah, Bertie is a decent ould character" etc.

Minister for Finance who didnt own a bank account

Won all his money on the horses and kept it in brown envelopes so he did

A lot of his sins would be forgiven had he not happened to be in charge of the country in the run up to the global financial crisis which was always going to heavily impact a small open economy like Ireland - he was extremely popular up to then but very few people will now admit they supported him.

Polling at the time showed his government actually rose in popularity even as controversies around his financial dealings became known.

I think he has a fair chance of winning the Aras. The weekend polls saying the electorate dont favour either Ahern or Adams are irrelevant because it is not a 1 or 2 horse race and you dont need a majority to win it.

People forget how stupid many Fianna Fail voters actually are. In the election right after they fcuked the economy FF voters still voted for them to the tune of 17%. Thats your died in the wool FF base, you can take money out of their pockets and tax them to oblivion but they will still vote for FF.

All Ahern needs to do is build on that 17% of idiots and get to circa 25%-27% which is typically enough to win the Aras in a crowded field of 6 or 7 candidates. That is not an impossible task. Also the polls at the weekend spun it as how many people would not vote for Ahern but when you broke it down the amount of people who said they definitely would vote for him and probably would vote for him or consider it came to almost 35%. Ahern will be salivating at those numbers because it shows it is possible. It is certainly more possible than his current odds of 12/1 on Paddy Power would suggest, the bookies are way off the mark on his actual chances of winning it. I've just put 20 quid on him because at least if he does win it the 240 quid profit will make me somewhat less annoyed about it.

But 51% saying they definitely would not vote for him is largely going to be 51% votingng for his closest rival to ensure he doesn't get it. He'll be the most divisive presidential candidate ever. The people who love him are drastically outnumbered by the people who genuinely hate him.

I don’t “genuinely hate him” but I also don’t want to see someone in the Aras that a lot of the population “hate”- while many don’t really like Mickey D, or don’t think he’s a good president, there are very few out there who actually “hate” him personally.

But as the poll says, it all depends on the candidates- for me, if there’s 3 other candidates and they’re Dana or Sean or Peter like we had in previous elections then sorry I’m voting Bertie

What about Miriam's chances? (O'Callaghan for the avoidance of doubt and confusion). Isn't she a threat to Bertie's ambitions?

I'm actually disgusted at Newstalk for giving Bertie Ahern as stage.

It's really quite disgusting and very irritating, so much so that I actually made a complaint to Newstalk FM about it. (Not something I'd normally do)

The man is a disgraced politician, and a relic of the Haughey era. I would speculate there was a heap of other stuff he was up to in that time that he was never caught for.

The rubbish he spouted about the peace process was the worst of all. Most people that follow politics know that it was Spring and Reynolds that did most of the heavy lifting on the Peace Process and Bertie got in there at the end for the photo op

I do not know if he will become president or not, but if he does, I'd have very little faith in the political process going forward. (For the foreseeable)

I recognize he contributed towards it, but he and the media seem to imply (as I see it) that it was him who orchestrated the entire thing, and that it would never happened without all his political work, which is just not historically correct.