"When I stepped off Air Force One at Shannon a few days ago, and saw Ireland, beautiful and green, and felt again the warmth of her people, something deep inside began to stir," waxed Ronald Reagan in 1984. "Who knows but that scientists will one day explain the complex genetic process by which generations seem to transfer, across time and even oceans, their fondest memories.”
Reagan — whose paternal great-grandfather was Irish Catholic, though he himself was not — was hardly the most Irish-identified of U.S. presidents, though many seem to forget the rest of their DNA map when deplaning on the Emerald Isle.
None other than the nation’s first African American president, Barack Obama, reminisced about his roots in the Kearney family of Moneygall while hoisting a Guinness in the local pub back in 2011.
Bill Clinton also claimed Irish ancestry, though without specific documentation. Nonetheless, his role in securing peace in Northern Ireland made him a true kinsman to those in Belfast and Dublin and beyond. His 1998 visit, designed to cement the peace process, is widely considered the most triumphant moment of his presidency.
Clinton was also following in the footsteps of his own great role model, John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, who journeyed to Limerick at the height of his global celebrity.
“This is not the land of my birth, but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection,” Kennedy cooed, to the swooning delight of nuns and publicans alike.
Now comes Joe Biden, whose roots in a working-class Irish Catholic family are the core of his political identity, his badge and shield. Not for nothing is he prone to long discourses on the wit and wisdom of his Grandpa Finnegan.
“Ambrose Finnegan,” he called out toward the ceiling when, as vice president, he hosted then-British Prime Minister David Cameron. His granddad had taught him not to trust WASP politicians.
But he seemed to remember himself and quickly added, “Things have changed.”
