Qualifications For A President

We're all aware that the U.S. President has to have been born there and be a citizen of the land.

In Ireland, it's difficult to enforce an equal restriction.

There's Dev, you see.

Parentage uncertain, history never fully explained, but without a doubt the old man was a Yank and didn't he rise up to the top of Irish politics?

So how could it be a problem for former singer and politician Dana (more properly, Dana Rosemary Scanlon) to become President of Ireland?

The issue came up before, when Dana wanted to run for the presidency and she had only just sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

Or maybe it didn't.

Back in 2008, when Ms. Scanlon took the oath of allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, she and her sister were engaged in a battle over rights to some of Ms. Scanlon's recordings. Words flew in the courtroom, and those words are popping up again now that Ms. Scanlon is in the running.

During bitter testimony, Ms. Scanlon's sister claimed that there was a long discussion about the problem of Dana running for the presidency in 1997, just after becoming an American citizen. Ms. Scanlon doesn't recall any such discussion, and sees no reason to hide her dual citizenship. After all, there was Eamon de Valera at the beginning, and everyone knew his American citizenship kept him from the firing squad at Kilmainham.

Ms. Scanlon sees herself as a dual citizen, her Irish loyalties intact. She says she only votes in Ireland, not America, and isn't that proof of her loyalty? Makes her American citizenship look like some kind of convenience or legal dodge, coming as it did while she was warring with her sister over those recordings.

And no, she doesn't recall the part of the oath that all new U.S. citizens take, renouncing allegiance to all other foreign lands. That includes Ireland, sad to say.

It's up to the Irish voters, in the end, but chances are, one of the many candidates will make a fuss over the dual citizenship thing in an effort to get ahead.

Pity that Ms. Scanlon can't take the de Valera analogy a step further and point to her Irish Republican Army support...no, wait, that's Martin McGuinness coming under fire for that one.