By now the caravan has moved on. St Patrick’s Day is dead and gone, it’s with O’Leary in his grave. Thank goodness. I have always been sceptical about the annual Paddyfest in the United States.
I know the arguments: any other country would give its right arm to have White House doors flung open to it, to be guest of honour at a dizzy round of cocktail parties, and to have the undivided attention of the most powerful man in global politics. I get it.
But Ireland must be the only country in the world that celebrates its patron saint’s special day by jumping on a plane and getting as far away from the place as possible. Dare I say it, it’s a touch colonial – the natives going to pay homage to the ‘big chief’.
It is testimony to our ‘neediness’ that we crave such attention, and the annual jaunt to Washington panders to the inferiority complex of Northern Ireland politicians who get to strut the world stage for a day while back home all around them crumbles – literally.
The truth is that St Patrick’s Day in the US has nothing to do with the affairs of this small island, but everything to do with domestic politics – no more so than in an election year. The Irish-American vote is powerful, and President Biden will be hoping that a touch of dewy-eyed romanticism will help him in November.
Biden is the quintessential Irish-American. His political career has traded on it. His ancestors emigrated during the Great Hunger. Ten of his 16 great-great grandparents were Irish, making him the most Irish of the US’s 46 presidents. He quotes Yeats and Heaney at every opportunity.
But fluent use of “where hope and history rhyme” is not a game-changer when it comes to this island’s politics. Indeed, Heaney’s phrase has been hollowed out by overuse. And when it comes to the politics of this place, it is hard to escape the feeling that Biden has dropped the ball.
Like many, I had high hopes for his presidency. With Britain in meltdown over Brexit, the north needed someone to protect the Good Friday Agreement from the predations of Conservative isolationists. They were – and are still - prepared to sacrifice peace here to return England to an idyll which never really existed.
We needed another Clinton, but got another Bush. Biden has been content to keep Ireland on the back-burner, and British misrule has been allowed to fester as a result. The consequences can be seen in the state of the health service, low levels of educational underachievement, and a failure to capitalise on the north’s unique position within the single market.
It is not only here that he has got things wrong. Another part of his political make-up is affection for Israel. No US government was going to withhold support for Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack last October.
But by failing to restrain Benjamin Netanyahu’s all-out war on Palestinians, Biden is complicit in the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza. The victims are not terrorists, but children, parents, doctors, nurses, journalists, teachers, academics, poets and families already living at the edge of poverty.
Colum Eastwood’s absence from Washington this year may have been seen by the administration as a token gesture – they had, after-all, secured the attendance of Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly. But Eastwood’s decision was a principled one. Sinn Féin’s defence, that it would challenge Biden on Gaza, was a formulaic response and holds little water.
We needed another Clinton, but got another Bush. Biden has been content to keep Ireland on the back-burner, and British misrule has been allowed to fester as a result
Although Biden’s campaign currently has a huge financial advantage over Trump’s; the betting is on Trump’s return to power. Such an outcome would be an existential threat to democracy in the US, and it would undermine further the state of global politics.
Given a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, there’s more hope at sea. But it is an indication of the state of Biden’s presidency that the most compelling reason to vote for him is to keep Trump out.
After a lifetime of public service, and a strong reputation in foreign affairs, Biden had an opportunity to make the world a more peaceful place. But he’s blown it, and we are all the poorer for that.
