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by Niall O'Dowd

Obama visit to Ireland a good political move

Posted on Friday, May 20, 2011 at 08:47 AM
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Obama brown bread was on sale at a shop in Moneygall, Co. Offaly


The visit to Ireland by President Obama next Monday marks the sixth time in the modern era that an American president has made his way to the Emerald Isle.

John F. Kennedy started the trend, followed by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Obama.
It is interesting to see how all those presidents are remembered, or not remembered, in the Emerald Isle.

Nixon, for instance, had relatives in Co. Laois, yet when a friend of mine went looking for any signs of relatives in a local graveyard that he visited he could find none. It was as if Nixon never came.

Bush similarly left no Irish footprint. When he announced a desire to visit Ireland, authorities there were so worried about mass demonstrations that they corralled him in the plush Dromoland Castle hotel for a few hours before bidding him a quick farewell.

Reagan fared by far the best of the Republican presidents who visited Ireland. His trip to his ancestral town of Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary, not far incidentally from Obama’s ancestral place at Moneygall in Co. Offaly, was a major success.

It was so much so that when Reagan’s presidential library was built in California they imported the Ronald Reagan Pub from the village, lock stock and barrel, and recreated it in his library.

Kennedy, of course, was and always will be the benchmark. His visit to Ireland in 1963 transformed Ireland and Irish America alike.

Here was the great-grandson of penniless Famine emigrants returning back as the most important man in the world.

The Irish loved him and he loved them back, and his memory is still strong and alive there today.  The Irish government recently announced his Wexford ancestral home would be a national historic site.

Bill Clinton was a president on a mission. He was first there in 1995 to secure the peace process he did so much to launch, and those who saw his speeches in Belfast and Dublin, as I did, will never forget them.

Clinton is still a very welcome visitor in Ireland, and has managed to reach a JFK level of popularity because of his outstanding work on that peace process in the minds of the Irish people.

Obama will get a rousing reception too, not for anything he has done for Ireland but for what he represents, a truly historical figure as the first African American president and a man who aroused huge excitement during his presidential run in Ireland.

His Irish roots will be the main feature of the day he spends there next Monday, a nice new angle for American media especially who are descending in their droves on Moneygall.

With the exception of George Bush Senior, every president since Reagan has visited Ireland.  It does them no harm at all to be seen in an Irish landscape.

Key election states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio have large numbers of Irish Americans who, no doubt, feel good when they see a U.S. president back in the old sod.

Sure Obama looks different, but he’s a Chicago pol who knows the angles too. It will do him no harm to parade through Moneygall as the returning hero, no matter how odd that might seem.

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READ MORE:
President Obama to address massive outdoor rally in College Green Dublin

Moneygall’s own secret agents - village gears up for Obama’s visit

Ireland ready for Obama visit
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4 Comments

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eiriamach | May 26, 2011, 03:27 PM EDT
Interesting! Tom Hayden's "Irish on the Inside" (2001) might add an ironic twist to O'Dowd's assessment of JFK's visit to Ireland in the year of his assassination. Hayden writes, "During his brief presidency, John Kennedy was advised against indulging his desire to visit Ireland once in his life. His Boston Irish advisers told him there were 'no political or diplomatic advantages to be gained' by what they dismissed as a 'sentimental excursion.' But the President apparently could not repress his 'sentimental' Irishness any longer, and decided to follow the advice of Robert Frost, who urged him at his inaugural to be 'more Irish than Harvard.'" Hayden adds, "John Kennedy met an Irish fate. Was it accident or conspiracy? We may never know, but from an Irish perspective it didn't necessarily matter. Life is not lived until it is understood as a tragedy, said Yeats. And as Moynihan said at the funeral, the world will break your heart." I think the spirit of JFK smiled broadly when he saw Obama shaking hands in Dublin. Politics is serious business, and visiting Ireland can help keep things in perspective. (Hayden quotes you also, Neill, in this book!)

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maloney | May 21, 2011, 10:44 PM EDT
Give me a break. obama breads arse.

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Rebelforce | May 20, 2011, 04:46 PM EDT
It's interesting to note that since since Kennedy, every US President (Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr) who made a point to visit Ireland won re-election. Those who didn't visit Ireland (Johnson, Ford, Carter, Bush Sr.) didn't get a second term.

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jamieLM | May 20, 2011, 09:34 AM EDT
A feel-good moment now, but in Nov. 2012 it won't mean anything. Americans, Irish ancestry or not, will vote on the status of health care, education, economic, and security/military/foreign policy issues, to name just a few. No intelligent person would vote for a presidential candidate because he/she made a trip to Ireland or anywhere else. Voters will ask themselves these 2 questions: Am I better off than I was 4 yrs. ago? and Is America headed in the right direction?

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