The Unusually Happy Son of Ireland: A Tribute to the Good Friday Agreement and to the American Dream of Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Described by Ireland’s prime minister last month as “unmistakably a son of Ireland,” Biden has at various moments ascribed his temper, his nostalgic streak, his politics and his humor all to his Irish roots. The most well-known passage from Yeats’ “Easter 1916” has appeared in 12 public remarks by Biden since he took office.

On Tuesday, the current Irish catholic president leaves for his own visit to Northern Ireland which is part of the United Kingdom, and then onto Ireland from Wednesday through Saturday.

Biden hopes to use his trip as a reminder of the power of sustained diplomacy during a time when America’s role abroad is being debated. There is a strain among Republicans that has led to questions about the validity of Washington’s global leadership. The Good Friday Agreement was one of the longest running examples of US diplomacy during the 20th century.

On Wednesday, Biden also met separately with the leaders of the five parties that make up Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, during which he stressed the importance of resuming the arrangement as part of the Good Friday Agreement’s legacy.

But it will be his personal engagements in the Republic of Ireland later in the week, including stops in County Louth and County Mayo to explore his family roots, that will best capture what Biden himself has described as perhaps his single most defining trait.

“As many of you know, I, like all of you, take pride in my Irish ancestry,” he said during a St. Patrick’s Day luncheon last month. “And as long as I can remember, it’s been sort of part of my soul.”

The White House gave away an extensive family genealogy stretching back as far as 1803 to the shoemakers and civil engineers who would eventually leave Ireland on ships bound for America. The famine of the 1840s and 1850s left most of the ships on the Irish Sea missing, meaning many of their passengers did not survive.

Despite his own experience of profound loss, Biden is seen as eternal optimism despite the impressions left by his ancestors.

“One of my colleagues in the Senate, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once made this simple but profound observation about us Irish: ‘To fail to understand that life is going to knock you down is to fail to understand the Irishness of life,’” he wrote in his 2017 memoir.

The Good Friday Agreement with Edward Blewitt: The Case for the Rule of Law in the United States, and an Odd Experiment to Get Real Bipartisan Buy-in

Biden will likely talk about that universal experience in remarks outside St. Muredach’s Cathedral later this week. According to the White House, Biden’s great-great-great grandfather Edward Blewitt sold 27,000 bricks that helped build that County Mayo cathedral, and used the money to bring his family on a ship to America.

He will be joining a number of his relatives for the journey. He was vice president in 2016 and spent six days visiting the island with several granddaughters and his sister.

“President Biden has been talking about liberal internationalism as something that can return, he talks about democracy versus autocracy, all of this kind of stuff. I think he wants to see good examples of the rule of law in US foreign policy. And this is a great example of that. Liam Kennedy is the director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at the University College Dublin.

Kennedy said the Good Friday Agreement is a way for Washington to get real bipartisan buy-in. That is a pretty odd thing.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/politics/joe-biden-ireland-trip/index.html

The Troubles between Britain and Ireland: The 1988 Correspondence between John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Martin Biden to the Irish America ‘Thermopolice’

Protestant Unionists who favor remaining part of the United Kingdom and Catholic Irish Nationalists who favor reunification with the Republic have mostly stopped provoking each other in the past. The Troubles led to more than 3,500 deaths, most of them civilians, and even more casualties.

In 1988, Biden told the Irish America magazine that as president he would try to reach a peace and he was bound to the White House.

“If we have a moral obligation in other parts of the world, why in God’s name don’t we have a moral obligation to Ireland? It’s part of our blood. It’s the blood of my blood, bone of my bone,” he said.

Since the deal was signed, that government has only been functioning intermittently, despite the fact that the Democratic Unionists withdrew their support due to the trade dispute.

The visit by Biden was a reminder of the American role in brokering peace, as was shown by the murder of the father of a lawyer.

When the terrorism threat level was raised by British intelligence in Northern Ireland in March there was still a threat of violence.

The police service estimated the cost of the operation to be more than seven million pounds, including motorcycle escort officers, firearms specialists and search specialists.

It’s not entirely a fact that “malarkey” — one of Biden’s frequently used terms — is Irish, but Biden attributes many features of his personality to being Irish-American.

It’s not clear whether a stop into the pub is in the plans, but grabbing a pint of beer is not. “I’m the only Irishman, though, you’ve ever met who’s never had a drink,” said Biden, who like his predecessor doesn’t drink alcohol.

Kennedy’s election was a breakthrough. Biden, on the other hand, is free to wear his heritage on his sleeve, O’Leary said, since electing an Irish Catholic to the highest office in the land is no longer a taboo.

“Indeed, I’d say he’s much more visibly an Ordinary Joe, an average Irish American, than was his predecessor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy,” said O’Leary, who points out Kennedy attended an elite private boarding school and then Harvard, making his lived experience much more Anglophile.

The United States Helps Northern Ireland: A 25-Year Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and the Status of the Northern Ireland Power-Sharing Agreement

“This was a … huge deal,” said Max Bergmann at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He believes that Biden will point out the Good Friday Agreement as an example of US engagement making a difference 25 years later.

The peace accord has been tested by brexit. The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union could lead to rows over borders. A new agreement called the Windsor Framework aims to ease those tensions, but the political situation in Northern Ireland remains difficult.

“America is not trying to interfere in the management of the power sharing arrangements within Northern Ireland,” O’Leary said. “That’s a clear signal that if those work, then there will be encouragement from the United States for foreign and direct investment.”

Biden wants to connect to his roots in a personal way and build strong relationships with Europe and the U.S.

He said that he hopes that democratic institutions in Northern Ireland remain critical for the future of the region.

The aim of Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland was to ensure that the US-brokered accord remained in place.

While he was invited to speak from the parliament building overlooking Belfast, Biden turned it down as the power-sharing arrangement remains in disarray. The regional government, which was formed a year ago, hasn’t been up and running in more than a year as the main unionist party fights new trade rules related to the exit from the EU.

Both Biden and the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had once hoped those differences might be resolved by the time of Biden’s visit this week. But they weren’t, leaving one of the primary ambitions of the Good Friday Agreement unfulfilled at just the moment the accord is being celebrated.

Biden’s aides worked around the disappointment by scheduling his speech at the new campus of Ulster University in Belfast, which cost millions of pounds to construct and can accommodate thousands of students – most of whom were born after the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

Biden said that the idea to build a glass building was highly unlikely as he opened his speech because of the violent era before the accord.

Where barbed wire once cut up the city is now a cathedral of learning with glass to let the light in and out. He said it has a profound impact. “And for someone who’s come back to see it, you know it’s an incredible testament to the power and the possibilities of peace.”

The violence from The Troubles isn’t a far memory for some students in Biden’s audience. Instead, it is economic opportunity that appears top of mind, particularly as Britain’s exit from the European Union complicates trade relations in the region.

Biden said that peace and economic opportunity would work together in Northern Ireland.

Ahead of the speech, Biden sat for brief talks over coffee with Sunak, though won’t participate in any major public events with him while he’s here. The White House denies that President Barack Obama did not attend a British monarchs coronation, but some argue that Biden is skipping the event because he dislikes the United Kingdom.

Some Loyalists have wondered if even the President of the United States, who is proudlyIrish-American, can be as successful when it comes to his ancestral homeland.

That includes the former leader of the Democratic Unionist Party Arlene Foster, who previously served as the first minister of Northern Ireland. She told the local radio earlier that Biden “hates the United Kingdom,” a charge later rejected by senior US officials.

“I think the track record of the president shows that he’s not anti-British,” said Amanda Sloat, the senior director for Europe at the National Security Council. “The president has been very actively engaged throughout his career, dating back to when he was a senator, in the peace process in Northern Ireland.”

The Carlingford Castle as a gateway to the North of the United States, and the Marchioness of Bute’s voyage to the US

When he tours the Carlingford Castle, Biden will be able to peer out from its tower to Newry, in the North, where Owen Finnegan set out in 1849 for his journey to the US aboard a ship called the Marchioness of Bute.