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

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

His "peace process legacy" is basically boiled down to this - He was the one sitting his inept arse on the Taoiseach's chair when the British establishment and the Provisional IRA leadership came to an agreement that they could not engage any longer with a bloody war that had the means and function to continue for another 100 years of an all out conflict. Another century of destruction. It had f**k all to do with Ahern, you could have had a donkey sitting on the Leinster House throne, they would have been lauded with this nonsense notion of "legacy" too. The "peace process" was secured in 1987 when the arsenal of the 'Eksund' was infiltrated, when the British finally copped on that the PIRA had the means to wage war on a monumental scale for decades, it had nothing to do with Ahern.

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.

Well then elaborate John, why do you think the British Security establishment felt the need to come to a negotiation table with the PIRA in the 1980's, was it because they discovered the PIRA was receiving 300 tonne shipments of arms every year onto the Island of Ireland to be used against them? Or was it because Mr. Bartholomew Ahern?

Well Ukraine has a comedian as a President so shure why not ha

Working for News of the World was very questionable judgement though! But man of the people and all that fake carry on was what he was into.

I always thought it was strange that an unproven writer would somehow get a film deal for her very first book before it was even published yet.

His interview with Andrew Neil tells you everything about Ahern. He thought he was going to do a fluff piece where Neil asked him easy questions and praised him for bringing peace to the island of Ireland.

When he was asked questions he didn't like or expect it was waffle and bluster and then he just got up and stormed out. Neil made him look as guilty as he is, he should have served time in jail or at the least been hit with a massive tax bill. A corrupt liar.