Donald Trump need not worry. Taoiseach Enda Kenny will attend the annual Big Bejaysus ceremony at the White House on St Patrick's Day. Since the early 12th century successive taoisigh have celebrated the equal status of our two nations by licking the president's shamrock while a harpist strums The Rose of Tralee. Once that process is over the Irish officials go through the ritual of laughing hollowly at the president's jokes and eating food that is not normally green. I haven't been. But the pictures on TV – and they're what matter – suggest junior executives trying to keep face at the boss's wine-and-cheese do.
"The blessed St Patrick, we're told, died on this day in 461," President Ronald Reagan, with Taoiseach Charles Haughey beside him, said in 1987. "Leave it to the Irish to be carrying on a wake for 1,500 years." Ha ha! Oh, very good, Mr Reagan. We always enjoy jokes about being permanently plastered. Invading anywhere nice for your holidays? (It's worth digging out footage of that event to note how Reagan, in a vague, mildly offensive tilt at an Irish accent, drops the "g" from "carrying".)
Okay, some of the above is not strictly fair. Indeed, bits of it are made up. Historians date the origin of the ritual to 1952, when John J Hearne, the Irish ambassador to the US, sent a box of shamrock to the White House. The buck was stopping somewhere else that day, but, despite President Harry Truman’s absence, the gesture seems to have been appreciated. The full bowl of shamrock – eventually a Waterford Crystal affair – did not arrive until 1961, when President John F Kennedy received gifts from Ambassador Tommy Kiernan. The celebrations expanded in the 1980s, and by the end of the century the White House was awash with musicians, poets and recovering paramilitaries.
Kenny's people are right to suggest that serious work gets done in and around the White House visit. During the uneasy years of the peace process the ceremony allowed President Bill Clinton to confirm his commitment to securing agreement.
File under Meaningless Waffle
The statement this week by a spokesman for the Taoiseach, suggesting that Kenny would attend to “maintain the historically strong links between the Irish and American peoples”, can be placed in the file marked Meaningless Waffle. Those links would remain even if Kenny used the occasion to wedgie Trump’s buttocks and dunk his boiled ham of a head in the White House fountain. But a refusal to attend would incur genuine risk. Trump maintains grudges with a fervour that would impress the Sicilian Mafia. Now the tradition has been established, a cancellation of the visit would be seen as a diplomatic snub. Kenny does not like to take many risks. Attending looks like the safe option.
If you approve of the president’s ambitions, policies and demeanour then I will pretend to respect your view and allow that you think no boycott is necessary. After all, I’m not Donald Trump. I’ve got some manners. But many Irish people now feel that the grabber-in-chief doesn’t deserve the ritual springtime kowtowing.
This is not a symmetrical relationship. The suggestion that an American president might leave the country on the Fourth of July would, within the US, be greeted with fury and bafflement. Shouldn’t they be coming to us? For a premier to deliver vegetation to a foreign leader on that premier’s national holiday is to show him or her enormous respect.
Not everybody enjoyed the sight of taoisigh cuddling up to George W Bush. And no doubt, following reports of those unseemly liaisons in the Oval Office, many Irish people grumbled at the deference shown to Clinton. But the belligerence, insensitivity, brutality, misogyny and mendacity that have gathered around this administration propels it into a different category. Intergovernmental communications must, for the protection of our citizens and economic interests, be continued as usual. But to touch forelocks to Trump is unseemly. It belittles us all.
Kenny has said he will tell Trump that he disagrees with the controversial travel ban on refugees and citizens of certain Muslim countries. If he does so at the podium while passing on the foliage then it might make sense of this unnecessary ritual. That might be humiliating for the president – and on this issue he deserves to be humiliated. But it seems most unlikely that is Kenny’s intention.
At any rate we opponents of the visit should continue bitching and moaning until the wretched thing is done with. There is a possibility that, if the complaints sound loudly enough, the safe option might be to stay away. That’s just about the only way this battle can be won.
