In Memory of His Father: An American President’s Special Remark on Ireland and the U.S., and His First Three Years in Ireland

Biden was described by Ireland as a son of Ireland last month and has at times attributed certain aspects of his personality to his Irish roots. He quotes poets like William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney freely; the most famous passage from Yeats’ “Easter 1916” has appeared no fewer than 12 times in Biden’s public remarks since he took office.

The presidents who’ve claimed Irish ancestry are from John Fitzgerald Kennedy to Barack Obama, who has Irish relatives on his mom’s side. But none has been quite as forward about it as Biden. The nation’s second Irish-Catholic president will go to Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday and to the Republic of Ireland on Wednesday. He heads back to the U.S. on Friday.

Biden hopes to use his trip as a reminder of what sustained diplomacy can yield at a moment America’s role abroad is being debated. Questions have been posed about the durability of Washington’s global leadership, due to an isolationist strain among Republicans. The Good Friday Agreement, brokered by the United States, stands as one of the most lasting examples of US diplomacy from the end of the 20th century.

A member of the British Parliament from the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party said that Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland this week would be a huge help to resolve some of the differences.

It will be his personal engagements in Ireland later in the week, including stops in Louth and County Mayo, that will capture what Biden says is his single most defining trait.

During a St. Patrick’s Day luncheon he said he takes pride in his Irish ancestry. It has been a part of my soul as long as I can remember.

Ahead of the trip, the White House distributed an extensive family genealogy stretching as far back as 1803, to the shoemakers and civil engineers and union overseers who would eventually leave Ireland on ships bound for America. Thecoffin ships were the ones left during the Irish famine of the 1840s and 1850s, because so many of their passengers didn’t survive.

Biden has a persona that is defined by eternal optimism despite his own experience of profound loss, which has left indelible impressions on 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.

Edward Blewitt and the Good Friday Agreement: His First Stop on a Cruise to the Island of Ireland, and an Example of American Foreign Policy

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’ll be joined by a number of his family members for the journey. He spent six days visiting the island with his sister, several grandsons and his two granddaughters after becoming vice president.

“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 examples of the rule of law in US foreign policy. And this is a great example of that. This was an achievement,” said Liam Kennedy, director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at the University College Dublin.

“The Good Friday Agreement is certainly one of those things where you can get real bipartisan buy-in in Washington,” Kennedy said. That is a pretty unusual thing.

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

Fiery Joe Biden, the Irish Democrat and the White House Bound: The role of the United Kingdom in the Troubles, and the danger of violence in Northern Ireland

Feuds between Protestants who support remaining in the United Kingdom and Catholics who support reunification with the Republic have mostly been left out of the 20th century. The Troubles led to more than 3,500 deaths, most of them civilians, and even more casualties.

In 1988, he told the Irish America magazine in a cover story (headline: “Fiery Joe Biden: White House bound?”) that as president he’d be active in trying to reach a peace.

There is a moral obligation in other parts of the world, but not in Ireland. It’s part of our blood. He said that it was the blood of his bone.

Yet that government has functioned only sporadically in the quarter-century since the accord was signed and has been frozen for more than a year after the Democratic Unionists withdrew because of the Brexit trade dispute.

A lawyer whose own father was murdered by Loyalist paramilitaries in collusion with UK state forces in 1989, Finucane said Biden’s visit was a reminder of the American role in brokering peace.

Still, the threat of violence has never entirely disappeared, a reality made evident when British intelligence services raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland from “substantial” to “severe” in late March.

An operation called “Operation Rondoletto” taking place over Easter weekend ahead of Biden’s visit was set to cost around $8.7 million (£7 million), the police service said, and include 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 that he’s much more Ordinary Joe, an average Irish American, than his predecessor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who attended an elite private boarding school and then Harvard, making his lived experience a lot more Anglophilic,” said O’Leary, who pointed out

25 Years of the Good Friday Agreement: How U.S. Engagement Helped the Cross-Section between Northern Ireland and the UK

“This was a huge deal,” said the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Max Bergmann. He expects Biden to hold up the Good Friday Agreement as “an example 25 years later where active U.S. engagement really made a difference.”

But Brexit has tested the peace accord. The United Kingdom’s move to withdraw from the European Union created new tensions over trade and risked stoking disputes over borders. The political situation in Northern Ireland remains difficult, but a new agreement has been reached to ease those tensions.

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

Biden’s ties to his roots are important, but so is the relationship between the U.S. and its European allies.