John F Kennedy set the template for US presidential forays to Ireland with a rapturous visit in 1963 that he called the best four days of his life.
Joe Biden’s visit this week did not quite match that fervour but at times it came close, alchemising politics, diplomacy and the personal into a feelgood glow for visitor and hosts.
Standing in Ireland’s legislature Biden raised his arms to heaven, saying: “Well, mom, you said it would happen. I’m at home. I’m home. I wish I could stay longer.”
It was corny but also true. This is the most Irish of presidents since Kennedy, a man steeped in Irish ancestry who cannot make a speech without citing Irish poets, proverbs, myths. He had visited Ireland before but to come as president was to consecrate the relationship between the US and Ireland.
He was late for engagements and he rambled. There were gaffes. He confused the All Blacks with the Black and Tans. He recast the foreign minister, Micheál Martin, a Corkman, as a proud son of Louth.
But the trip was a success. Biden navigated the Northern Ireland leg – a meeting with Rishi Sunak, a speech at Ulster University in Belfast to mark the Good Friday agreement’s 25th anniversary – deftly. Instead of hectoring the Democratic Unionist party over the collapse of power sharing, he said he was there to “listen” and dangled a $6bn (£5bn) carrot of US investment if Stormont was restored.
The party’s former leader, Arlene Foster, still accused him of hating Britain, a line echoed by some colleagues and UK commentators, but the DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, and other unionist leaders were respectful, even warm.
Once Biden crossed the border on Wednesday his smile broadened and his schedule loosened as he dallied with well-wishers in Dublin and lingered in the Cooley peninsula in County Louth, where his great-grandfather James Finnegan was born. A reporter asked amid driving wind and rain what he thought of the weather. “It’s fine. It’s Ireland,” Biden beamed.
The entourage included his son Hunter, his sister Valerie, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and other senior officials that reflected US diplomatic and corporate interests in Ireland.
There is evidence the trip has already boosted US tourist numbers. “Biden’s trip is like a golden worldwide tourism windfall,” said Paul Allen, a public relations consultant who launched an Irish for Biden campaign in 2020.
The love-in continued in Dublin, where a day of ostensible politics – meetings with President Michael D Higgins and the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, the address to a joint sitting of parliament – felt more like a family reunion. “President Biden, today you are among friends because you are one of us,” said Seán Ó Fearghaíl, the speaker of the Dáil.
There was an element of paddywhackery and performative Irishness for a returned son of Erin. Donald Trump mocked Biden for making such a tip while the world was “exploding”.
Few doubt the sincerity of Biden’s Irish affinities. But the pilgrimage had some electoral logic. Other US presidents – Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama – visited Ireland the year before re-election contests. Biden is expected to seek another term.
The trip is unlikely to sway Irish Americans, as many of the 30 million-plus Americans who profess Irish roots vote Republican. And those who vote Democrat will back Biden, if at all, for reasons unrelated to his visit to a pub in Dundalk or a Catholic shrine in County Mayo.
The trip, rather, reinforces an Ellis Island narrative about the US being built by immigrants from all over the world, not just Ireland, about a land of opportunity where working-class families can forge communities, send their children to college and achieve the American dream.
Biden’s last stop on Friday was Ballina, a County Mayo town where he has relatives from another side of the family. It is twinned with his native Scranton in Pennsylvania. The hosts prepared a dramatic light show for his farewell speech outside St Muredach’s cathedral. It promised to be part homecoming, part campaign rally.
