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Thursday, 13 Apr 2023
Updated / Thursday, 13 Apr 2023 07:38
A smiling Joe Biden in Dundalk
By Robert Shortt
Economics Correspondent
Air Force One landed in a massive spray of rain on the runway of Dublin
Airport.
The weather was awful.
But as soon as the 46th President of the United States emerged, it was
clear nothing - not least the weather - was going to rain on Joe
Biden's parade.
He was greeted on the tarmac formally by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
More handshakes hidden under curiously striped black umbrellas followed
before he got a big hug from the current US Ambassador to Ireland,
Claire Cronin.
There was a perceptible change in mood. Suddenly, everyone gathered in
the gloom seemed to be genuinely happy. Not the rictus smile of
official engagement; real smiles were breaking out.
The president's younger sister and long-time campaign manager, Valerie
Biden, seemed momentarily emotional before gathering her notoriously
chatty brother into the waiting Beast.
The president's son, Hunter, was on hand with an umbrella. Ignore, if
that's possible, the assembled posse of secret service agents and
dignitaries and this could have been a moment snapped from any older
family bewildered and happy to be back somewhat that feels like a
spiritual home.
The first day of President Biden's visit to Ireland has gone well.
His speech in Belfast, the most politically sensitive event of the
week, covered all the serious themes demanded of the occasion with a
lightness of touch.
Joe Biden delivered an address in Belfast this morning
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson acknowledged the references the US
President made to the Ulster Scots who played such a pivotal role in
the early history of the United States.
We also heard of the perhaps lesser-known George Biden, another
ancestor of the president who hailed from England and wrote the Royal
Navy's rules on mutinies.
This is a sentimental journey for President Biden. But sentimentality
and the emigrant story is a powerful force that weaves its way through
both politics and the shared identities of many Americans.
That's not just an Irish story.
Carl Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief of the influential Real Clear
Politics website, wrote earlier this week that when JKF was planning
his June 1963 visit to Ireland, his trusted Boston political aide Kenny
O'Donnell told him he already had "all the Irish-American votes he was
ever going to get" and that his trip would be dismissed "as a pleasure
trip".
Cannon writes that in response, Kennedy replied: "That's exactly what I
want."
He explains that behind the hard political analysis of what the trip
may have symbolised was "a political magic" that is "hard to conjure up
on command".
It's hard to gauge from this side of the Atlantic just how much
political magic may emerge from the relentless April drizzle that had
drenched the president's visit so far.
Crowds greeted Joe Biden in Dundalk this evening
The US press has, at several points during President Biden's career,
discussed his frequent use of the word "malarkey" (that's how they
spell it).
To our ears, it may sound like a slightly comic phrase straight out of
Darby O'Gill and the Little People and which, like the best Irish
phrases, can mean whatever it's meant to mean depending on who and how
they say it.
US Presidential visits to Ireland have more than their fair share of
malarkey. But that doesn't mean the joy they spark isn't genuine both
for presidents and the people lining the streets.
And it certainly doesn't mean the malarkey can't have a magical effect
for the very serious pantomime of US political campaigns.
__________________________________________________________________
Live updates: Biden in Ireland
Gallery: US President visits begins visit
Locals meet US President on Dundalk visit
Biden gives keynote address in Belfast