At last, stripped across a full page of The Washington Post, was the headline Richard Nixon had always wanted to see:
“President’s Irish heritage on full display as he visits the Emerald Isle.”
Alas, it came more than a half century after Nixon wanted to see it. And worse yet, it wasn’t about Nixon, America’s most Wannabe Irish president of all time. It was all about another American president who had a non-Irish name — but who, unlike Nixon, has unquestionably Irish ancestors: the Finnegans.
Joseph Robinette Biden’s maternal great-great-grandfather, Owen Finnegan, had toured Carlingford Castle to say farewell, just before departing for New York in 1849. And this week, Joe Biden toured the castle and declared: “It feels wonderful. It feels like I’m coming home.”
Despite being a guy with non-Irish names, Joe Biden has always been famously and unquestionably Irish. And as he spent this week in Ireland, basking in the glories of his Irishness, there were times when I was sure I could hear the bonkity-bonk of Richard Milhous Nixon spinning in frustration.
Indeed, Nixon had been famously jealous of all things Kennedy Irish even before Jack Kennedy narrowly beat him in the 1960 presidential election. Even his White House staff loyalists talked about it as “The Old Man’s obsession.” Finally, in 1970, Nixon decided to do something about it. (And I was there to chronicle it.)
On Oct. 3, 1970, President Nixon ended a tour of European capitals by landing in Ireland where humongous presidential preparations had been made to help Nixon make history. Or, more precisely, remake his family history.
It wasn’t easy. No records had ever been found to document that Richard Milhous Nixon had any Irish ancestors — even though Nixon had long claimed to be Irish. So, frantic Nixon staff arranged for personnel from other U.S. embassies to be sent to Ireland to search. They found a few Quaker families that spelled their name “Milhouse.” Close enough.
They picked a bucolic setting in Timahoe, in County Kildare — and arranged for history to be made there. It was a quaint spot bounded by a woody hedge and an old rail fence, where some Irish Quakers were buried without fancy headstones.
Then the commemorators of history arrived to make the place fit for a history-making presidential visit. They sheared the woody hedge, tore down the old rail fence, and installed store-bought sod where the old grass had been. They hacked a grand bush and used the stump-top as a resting place for a temporary White House communications telephone. They built a gravel pathway that led to a new modern monument — a stone slab, tilted rakishly atop six pillars, engraved with an official confirmation none dare deny:
“In Memory of The Irish Quakers of Timahoe. Dedicated October 5, 1970 by Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States of America, Whose Maternal Ancestors Are Resting Here.”
Helicopters landed, America’s president emerged, a band played and the ceremony began. No Nixon relative could be found, so they brought in the next best thing. Mrs. Olive Goodbody, the historian of the Society of Friends in Ireland. She stepped to the microphone and handed Nixon replicas of documents showing that a man named Milhouse had lived there before departing for Pennsylvania well before the American Revolution. She proclaimed he was Nixon’s sixth great-grandfather.
Finally! A beaming Nixon thanked Mrs. Goodbody profusely.
Half a world away, U.S. troops were pursuing the massive bombing and ground war in Vietnam. That day, their commander in chief declared that his mother and grandmother, both pacifists, would be proud of him for using U.S. troops in the pursuit of peace.
“I am a member of the Society of Friends and this cemetery is in the spot where once there was a church where the Society of Friends in Timahoe worshipped,” said Nixon (whose father was a Methodist). Then Nixon took it to the next level — talking about what it will mean if his military quest for peace succeeds.
“As one who happens to be of the Quaker faith, now holding the office of President of the United States,” Nixon said, “ … then I can truly say that I have lived up to what I think my ancestors, who worshipped in this place so many centuries ago, would have wanted one of theirs to be, if he ever got to the high office that I now hold.”
That was the day Nixon made history, his way. And if dishing the blarney (see also: Irish chutzpah) ever becomes a measure of ethnicity, that may become famous as the day when Irish Dick Nixon stood in Timahoe and finally out-Irished all the Kennedys combined.
