How Leo can conquer the White House,
Ahead of the Taoiseach’s White House visit, Bill Linnane advises how to navigate everything from the welcome to the small talk with Melania
There aren’t many countries that get to hold their national celebration in other people’s countries. It’s like forcing your neighbour to host your birthday party, even though they will be cleaning green hair dye and sick off their sofa for a month.
The fact we are given access to the White House on an annual basis is something to be celebrated, even when the occupant of the Oval Office is the very stable genius Donald Trump. Last year Enda Kenny went over and delivered a stern lecture to President Trump on how St Patrick was an immigrant, although technically St Pat was a kidnap victim, one who wrought his own revenge on Ireland by killing all our snakes and making us Catholic.
This year, obviously, is going to be different. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is a thoroughly modern leader, so there is hope he will be less like the school principal mode adopted by Kenny and more like the hip young teacher just out of college who is going to change the way we learn with a fresh new approach, but ends up having a nervous breakdown instead.
How should he handle the challenges of being a thoroughly modern leader facing into a social encounter with a US President that is stuck in the 1950s? How will Leo navigate the minefield that is the current Oval Office? And what sort of socks should he wear?
1. The welcome
Forget the shamrock. For years we have been bringing a bowl of these cheerful little weeds to the White House in the hope no one points out a bouquet of flowers from Aldi would be much nicer. Perhaps a more fitting plant to represent the Irish people would be a jar of Japanese knotweed.
Like the noble knotweed, we are a notoriously invasive species — we show up everywhere and are almost impossible to get rid of, even with fire. Just as those signs on the roadside warning about the presence of knotweed are largely ineffectual, the ‘no Irish need apply’ signs from the days of yore had almost no impact, and we cheerfully rolled into America with a “how’s she cuttin’’ and centuries later we are still there. In case our jar of knotweed gets confiscated by security, we can always just hand over some four leaf clover, since no one in America seems to know the difference between it and shamrock anyway.
2. The road trip
Varadkar was off to a good start in his choice of destinations in the run-up to the main event in Washington. First he visited ‘The County Kerry of America’ — Texas. Just as Kerry has been teetering on the brink of secession for a century, so too has Texas. Texas also has former governor Rick Perry, current Secretary of Energy, who says switching to renewable energy from fossil fuels is “immoral”, habitually enforces pro-life policies, and advocates for the teaching of “intelligent design” (a clever rebrand of creationism) in schools. All he needs is a flat cap and Texas becomes a home away from home for Varadkar.
3. Avoid confrontation
Trump is notoriously touchy, so perhaps it might be best not to mention the meeting Varadkar had with members of the Choctaw nation. Instead of telling the president he met with Native Americans, why not simply tell him he met with nativist Americans, the racist bedrock of Trump’s target demographic?
If anyone should present Trump with images of Leo wearing a native headdress or smoking a peace pipe, Leo can just call it fake news and blame the lamestream media/Obama/Isis/Dems. On a similar vein, it might be best for Leo to go by the Irish version of his name, Leon De Varad, which is both easier to say for someone who struggles with bigly words, and also has the bonus of sounding slightly Russian, which should set Trump right at ease.
4. Greeting Melania
When greeting a head of state’s partner, it is rarely wise to make comments on their appearance, such as Trump did with Emmanuel Macron, telling him that his spouse was ‘in such good physical shape’. When meeting Melania, or whatever lookalike has been hired to replace her this week, it might be more appropriate for Leo to ask if she is being treated well or if she has any messages she would like delivered to the outside world.
Dr Varadkar could also give her some useful medical advice on caring for a senior citizen.
5. Conversational topics
Trump’s notorious locker room talk will hopefully not be a feature of this encounter, but just in case, maybe Leo should have some alternative topics prepared. Brexit could be brought up, but the myriad complexities of it might be a tough one to explain to a simple man who likes his steak well done with a side of ketchup, so maybe just use the analogy of