President Obama and Ireland - a love story

PHOTOS:  President Obama's trip to Ireland - photo gallery

At the end of this week, we’re likely to feel a bit bereft.

After all, given the febrile flurry of the last fortnight where we’ve hosted the Queen, the President and, eh, Portuguese football fans, you’d be forgiven for wondering who was next. The Pope maybe? The ghost of Che Guevara? Shirley Bassey? Alas, no. No visitors next week. But even though Obama has left us, at least we have the man who nicked his lines in front of his face.

Throughout President Obama’s visit, Enda Kenny looked like a man who could scarcely believe he was doing all the things he was doing, like Scott Bakula at the start of an episode of Quantum Leap. Unfortunately for him, Kenny’s moment where he looks in the mirror and says “Oh boy” occurred in front of a massive crowd on College Green. No doubt conscious of the gravity of introducing President Obama to a podium, Kenny had some fine words to impart before handing over to his good friend Barry. Unfortunately they were almost identical to the words Obama himself used after beating John McCain in November 2008, with references to “America” crudely scribbled out and replaced with “Ireland”. Enda claims the whole thing was a deliberate homage, and as a man who once wrote a sketch performed in secondary school that was almost exclusively lifted/homaged from Frasier, I’m inclined to take him at his word.

With the exception of a comic interlude where Obama and Kenny were interviewed in leather chairs, and the President talked while Enda had a look on his face like he was pretending to understand medieval French, the Taoiseach had no other real part to play, as Obama ramped around the country wielding shovels, drinking Guinness and meeting the relatives. As if often the case with visits like this, what’s rendered is often secondary to the fact that rendering is being done at all, and in that respect the informality and clear enjoyment exhibited by the President and the First Lady on their trip will live long in the memory.

And as memories go Obama’s speech on College Green, with a crowd that looked as if it enveloped pretty much everything south of the Liffey stirred a considerable amount of nostalgia. The last time such a venture was attempted Bill Clinton achieved nigh on demi-God status for his emotional investment in the Irish peace process, that was fifteen years ago. That day he acknowledged that Irish people admitted “they weren’t there yet” when it came to the foundations of a lasting peace, but this week Obama paid tribute to the progress we’ve made since then. Small wonder the mood was so buoyant.

And if he didn’t do a good enough job of winning Ireland over with his love of porter and his high-flying well-done-you-rhetoric, the fact he got The Beast stuck on a grill sealed it. There’s nothing more Irish than driving down a road you shouldn’t.

PHOTOS:  President Obama's trip to Ireland - photo gallery

My favourite revolutionary Thomas “Ken” Whitaker

Loads has been written about the effect and purpose of the leaders of the Easter Rising and it’s not a topic I’ll be adding to in any great detail, but it has caused me to think a lot about the men involved, and whether the country they died for paid a blind bit of notice.

Patrick Pearse, for instance, would likely be horrified that the education system’s “Murder Machine” he railed against a hundred years ago is still basically in place. James Connolly would be similarly horrified that Ireland became such a seedily acquiescent place for ostentatious high-rollers and amoral profiteers. Easter Rising commemorations seem to boil down to histrionic admiration for people whose ideas - or methods - we’re happy to ignore. 

That the leaders of the Easter Rising should be so commemorated is not something that’s going to go out of vogue anytime soon, but there are other Irish revolutionaries deserving of as much if not more praise that we should think about now and then. One of them, my own personal favourite revolutionary, was only born in 1916. His name is TK Whitaker. 

A civil servant who bounded up the ranks with immense and unusual velocity, Thomas “Ken” Whitaker was appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance in 1956 before he turned 40. While there, he initiated the First Programme For Economic Expansion, a red-letter document that shook Ireland out of its protectionist torpor and opened the country up to the world. After leaving the Department of Finance he became Governor of the Central Bank and was a key figure in getting Ireland signed up to the European Common Market. In his later years he founded the Economic  And Social Research Institute, the ESRI, as well as serving as Chancellor of the National University, as a Senator and as Chairman of committees on issues like penal and constitutional reform. But he also had another string to his bow beyond the economic or academic: his expertise on the North.

It was Ken Whitaker along with his northern counterpart Jim Malley that masterminded the historic meeting between Sean Lemass and Terence O’Neill which was the first time opposite numbers from both sides of the border discussed issues of common interest, or indeed anything at all. As a senior advisor to Jack Lynch, he was a resolute voice of moderation when the pressure to respond militarily to civil rights atrocities in the North was beyond intense.  He also wrote papers on Northern Ireland’s constitutional position, with analysis on how the situation there came to be and how it could develop. We may not realise it, but over the last half decade or so Ireland has walked down a road almost single-handedly created by Ken Whitaker. 

Not only was he the first to see the potential of opening up Ireland’s economy, and engaging with Northern Ireland through proper diplomatic means, but he also devised plans to make them reality. Most revolutionaries are willing to die for a country that ought to be, but TK Whitaker dedicated his life for a country that was, and changed it emphatically for the better. And we should commemorate that at every turnabout.