IA.Presidents2.Rev.qxd
7/9/11
11:10 AM
Page 34
Presidential Visits to Ireland sit down together with the common goal of consigning violence and inequality to the past.”
post-presidency diplomatic silence and phoned David Cameron, the leader of the Conservatives in Britain. He made a plea for Cameron to press allies in Northern Ireland to support the ongoing peace process.
Protesting Bush f there are parallels to JFK’s and Clinton’s historic visits, so, too, are there similarities between Nixon’s and George W. Bush’s. Wartime tensions were high once again when Bush paid a brief visit to Ireland in June, 2004. Thousands of protesters hit the streets from Cork to Dublin. Then there was Bush’s infamous interview with RTÉ broadcaster Carole Coleman. Bush supporters felt the dogged Irish reporter refused to allow the president to answer her tough questions. “The interview, broadcast from the White House on Thursday, 24 hours before the president’s visit to Ireland, so displeased President Bush and his advisers that it led to the cancellation of another RTE exclusive… an interview with the president’s wife Laura,” the Irish Independent noted in the wake of the incident. Given this inauspicious start, it’s not surprising the trip itself was rather banal. Bush arrived in County Clare for the annual EU-US summit, which took place
I
34 IRISH AMERICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2011
Obama’s “Blood Link”
ABOVE: Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson greets President George Bush on his first and only trip to Ireland in June, 2004. BELOW: President Obama and Michelle arrive in Ireland in May.
in Dromoland Castle. It is estimated that 7,000 security personnel were on hand guarding Bush and other top officials during the visit, which lasted just 16 hours. Not enough personnel to keep a photographer from snapping a photo of Bush in undershirt, peering out the window of his bedroom at Dromoland that was published in the Irish tabloid newspaper The Star on Sunday despite a government ban. Bush, however, maintained an interest in Irish affairs. In 2010, he broke his
nd finally, there is Barack, er, O’Bama. As with JFK, there was something of a “pleasure trip” feel about the president’s May 2011 jaunt. But that does not make Obama’s trip any less historical. As 21st -century Ireland transforms, with its own assimilation of immigrants, it makes perfect sense that Obama would proudly assert his Irish roots – and transform our own conception of what the Irish diaspora looks like. At the same time, Obama – America’s first black president – firmly reasserted Ireland’s long historic ties to the U.S. “For the United States,” he said, “Ireland carries a blood link.”
A
Editor’s Note: One other president visited Ireland after he left office. In 2007 Jimmy Carter went to Dublin to address a human rights forum in Croke Park.