‘Democracy has prevailed’
Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States and vows to end ‘uncivil war’
IT IS 6,000 miles away, part of a vast continent stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, while we are a small rain-sodden island on the edge of Europe. Yet we are bound together through deeply personal ties of blood and history.
As he was inaugurated 46th President of the United States in Washington yesterday, no one seems more proud of these shared roots than ‘Irish’ Joe Biden, who comes from the small town of Scranton in Pennsylvania and proudly traces his ancestry back to the Finnegans of the Cooley peninsula in Co Louth on his mother’s side, and the Blewitts of Ballina, Co Mayo on his father’s.
It isn’t just lip service, as his cabinet includes a third who are either ethnic Irish, Catholic or both, uniting these two strands of his heritage in the new US administration. Those of us of a certain age remember the framed colour photographs of JFK and Pope John XX111 on either side of the glowing red Sacred Heart lamp in the most humble of Irish cottages.
They were the symbols of a deep connection to the New World and Rome. Back then, the faith of our fathers was strong and the political ‘machine’ exemplified by the Kennedys was the power that raised the unwashed and uneducated Catholic Irish masses from the mean streets of New York, Boston and Chicago to a new and mostly prosperous future.
With Rome Rule broken and the powerful new African American and Hispanic communities utilising the political tools pioneered by the Irish working classes, that may seem like a lost world.
But as Biden takes his place in the pantheon of American presidents, he has already shown that the connections forged between the New World and the Auld Sod are still strong.
“Remember, Joey Biden, the best drop of blood in you is Irish,” his granny used to tell him, an admonition he’s never forgotten.
“I’m Irish,” he said, without breaking stride, when a plummy voiced BBC television reporter attempted to attract his attention during the election campaign.
He said it with the same natural pride most of us take when we’re asked where we come from. Irish Americans carry that very same badge of honour. If anything it is us, the ‘real’ Irish who have taken the connection for granted until recent years.
There was a tendency to sneer at ‘The Yank’ who came home and boisterously ordered drinks in the local bar, as if he was a clone of John Wayne in The Quiet Man. We were equally amazed on visiting America to encounter the cab driver who hardly knew where Ireland was on the map, but proudly declared: “I’m Irish too.”
Who else gets to parade down 5th Avenue, New York, on their ‘national’ day, no
matter what day of the week it falls? Or whose leader gets an annual one-to-one with the American president in the White House over an oversized bowl of shamrock?
In more recent years, as the world turned into a global village, we have become reconciled and for most of us, proud, of the Irish-American heritage and the enormous goodwill that stretches from the political corridors of power to the powerful boardrooms of Wall Street.
Of course, we had ‘tricky’ Richard Nixon in Timahoe and Ronald Reagan in Ballyporeen, and the sneaking suspicion that their presence had more to do with the powerful Irish American vote than their tenuous Irish roots. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama kept the tradition alive. Both seemed to enjoy their Irish links and Clinton, in particular, devoted time and energy to the peace process far and above the call of duty. For all our many faults, there is a certain Irish non-colonial charm that allows us to straddle the new and old worlds.
Mary Harney once told us that we should lean closer to Berlin than Boston. But somehow we have managed to embrace both, by being good Europeans (mostly), while at the same time maintaining the deep goodwill on the other side of the Atlantic. As Biden takes centre stage as only the second (Irish) Catholic president, he also brings with him a new kind of sophisticated Irish-American political identity – one that appears confident and inclusive. It is a world away from the legacy of powerful Irish-American political figures like mayors Richard ‘Boss’ Croker of New York, James Curley in Boston and Richard Daley in Chicago, men who clawed their way into City Hall and held grimly to power through patronage, nepotism and graft.
Instead, Biden brings with him a more cerebral attitude, although in the present climate he will also need an iron fist in the velvet glove if he is to overcome the legacy of his predecessor.
On Tuesday, saying farewell to Delaware which he represented in the Senate from 1973 until 2009 when he became vice-president, he said: “James Joyce once said, when it comes his time to pass, when he dies, he said: ‘Dublin will be written on my heart.’ Well, excuse the emotion, but when I die, Delaware will be written on my heart.”
He has said that political colleagues “kid me about quoting Irish poets” all the time. “They think I do it because they are Irish. I do it because they are the best poets,” he added.
It is to the words of Seamus Heaney and in particular his poem The Cure of Troy that he has turned to most often. “The longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme.”
Accepting the Democratic nomination in 2020, he paraphrased it by saying his mission is to “make hope and history rhyme”. He managed to do that for many by winning the most divisive election in US history, and as he was inaugurated yesterday, most of us will wish it is a pledge he can now keep.