'Conor McGregor is willing to become a pain in the Aras - but I know the anti-McGregor'

In the polling booth early yesterday, with only a crisp ballot paper and its 16 smiling, beseeching headshots for company, a 17th face gatecrashed my consciousness.

It belonged to Ireland’s titan of political assessment, the nation’s selfless, modest and deep-thinking muse, Conor McGregor.

Not so long ago, as he deployed his piercing social media loudhailer to storm-whip the Dublin rioters (“Ireland, we are at war”), McGregor openly fantasised about taking up residency in one of the Phoenix Park’s storied institutions.

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No, not behind bars in a Dublin Zoo cage. Egged on by his legion of cultish sycophants, tapping out and surrendering to an ego that long ago gripped him in a suffocating chokehold, our towering 21st century patriot imagined himself accepting the presidential baton from Michael D.

Yes, Conor was willing to officially become a pain in the Aras. As absurd delusions go, it could be rivalled only by a revelation that Guy Fawkes once applied for the CEO’s role at Maguire and Patterson.

It hardly requires hindsight to recognise McGregor’s pitch for the Big House - “Young, active passionate, fresh skin in the game. I listen. I support. I adapt” - as part-David Brent, part-cake mix of ignorance, arrogance and twisted self-regard.

Back in the polling booth, a political orphan, I found myself, in the absence of any convincingly visionary candidate or party or manifesto, reduced to voting tactically against those I most feared might further expose already weeping societal wounds.

I thought again of that McGregor phrase: Fresh skin in the game. Was there somebody out there with the credentials to fight the oxide blight eating away at the national mood, to reverse the ongoing corrosion of optimism? To bring a fresh shine to rusted dreams?

Somebody with a proven ability to bring people together, to maximise the resources at their disposal, an individual unafraid of hard decisions, at their best when the pressure is most intense, with a proven capacity to translate ambitious vision into reality.

A figure who would, to borrow from Napoleon Bonaparte himself, be “a dealer in hope.” And in a light-bulb moment, came the revelation: He’s there, right in front of us.

He even earned universal praise for his first baby-steps in something resembling the political world, as chair of the People’s Assembly that teased out whether Dublin should have a directly elected, all-powerful Lord Mayor.

I refer to an authentic sporting behemoth, one at the opposite end of the seriousness bandwidth to the type of cretin who punches old men in pubs.

The rucksack of Jim Gavin’s life is overpacked with achievement and intelligence, wisdom of judgement and insight, a capacity to unify and embolden, to reach out for uncharted territory, to encourage those with whom he works to dream in technicolour.

An unbending constable of probity, clear-eyed, perceptive and self-aware, proven in the most demanding cauldron, Dwight D Eisenhower’s assertion that “the supreme quality of leadership is integrity,” fits the former Dublin manager like a bespoke suit.

Whether on the Croke Park sideline, over a distinguished military career, as a pilot and senior Irish Aviation Authority official, a public speaker, in his methodical big-picture planning and ability to surround himself with a best-in-class cabinet of lieutenants, Gavin has repeatedly ticked the superior superintendent’s box.

Erudite, informed, curious, hungry for knowledge, a keen historian, imbued with a keen sense of place, he is a patriot in the truest meaning of an often misappropriated word.

Full disclosure: It is my good fortune to be able to call myself a friend of this Dubliner who treasures his West Clare heritage.

It is that very time in his company, offering a window into his work ethic, humanity, willingness to listen, capacity to find common ground - that persuades me that here is that rarest of individuals: The natural born leader.

Sporting figures can have a profound effect on their people. Courtesy of his magnetic charisma and the emotional connection he made with the Kop, Jurgen Klopp became the de facto cultural and social leader of the Scouse tribe.

As with Bill Shankly, he sprinkled an upbeat joy and a restorative sense of identity across his adopted city.

There is nobody in Meath who commands more instant respect than the sage octogenarian Sean Boylan, few who gives the Wexford clans a warmer or fuzzier feeling than the mesmerising leader of their 1996 hurling revolution, Liam Griffin.

Three decades ago, a plainspoken, pit-man’s son from England’s North East united Ireland in a way no politician ever has. Jack Charlton and the days of thunder he authored gifted a ravenous country an unforgettable feast of self-esteem. For a little while, problems melted away.

Jack Lynch hung up his crimson Cork jersey after a storied career that yielded five hurling and one football All-Ireland and replaced it with the garments of political office.

So, the question is less why Jim Gavin, as why not?

Coincidentally, just last week, I read Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart’s riveting political memoir, a sharp, candid, beautifully written insider account of life inside the Westminster halls of power.

Stewart, a contender in the Conservative leadership campaign that gifted the UK the shallow, cynical, bumbling untruths of Boris Johnson, imagines a different world.

It is one where “energy came from prudence; shame; seriousness; action, and the wisdom of practical judgement.”

If Irish politics can be likened to a hopelessly demanding crossword, then it must be said that nobody, not Simon Harris, Micheal Martin or Mary Lou MacDonald can possibly be remotely equipped to solve all the complex clues. Neither, of course, is Jim Gavin.

There is no make-believe genie to be summoned from the bottle to grant three wishes that might instantly resolve deep-rooted issues in housing, immigration and health.

But at a time when it too often feels like society’s binding civic fibres are unravelling, when so many are barely riding above the tideline of despair, leadership of substance offers a glue to hold the connective tissue together, a lifebuoy to keep a nation afloat.

I imagine somebody like Gavin as a fire hose to douse the seething, unintelligent, divisive fury that blazes across the landscape, social media its dangerous accelerant.

A dispenser of much needed calm to a land in agitated flux. If not to the entire nation, then certainly to his home city.

To those of us who are proud sons or daughters of Dublin, who have a bottomless affection for our capital city, there is a burning desire to have somebody at the controls who can cut through the endless layers of bureaucracy, who can tend the old town’s wounds.

A commander who can do the small things like repair the footpaths and wash away the graffiti, while tackling macro issues like dereliction and housing and crime.

Somebody who can flavour the daily conversation with the tasty condiments of hope, imagination, creativity, sincerity, realism, ambition and integrity.

For many of us on this seismic political weekend, nothing would be more gratifying than to hear that Dublin would at last have a directly elected mayor, somebody with the authority and financial muscle to give a great city a much needed makeover.

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu says “a leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work his done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

He might have been describing the anti-McGregor, a figure of substance, a creature without conceit, one who places the greater good above his own selfish obsessions.

He might have been painting a verbal portrait of an exceptional son of Ireland, one who resides at the crossroads where vision and humility intersect. A man like Jim Gavin.

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