Miriam Lord: Joe Biden, giddy with Irish pride, serves up delicious gaffe

It’s amazing what some people will do to get that special holiday snap.

For Joe Biden it involved a trip across the Atlantic with some close family members, an airlift of armoured vehicles, the unquestioning co-operation of a foreign government and a cast of thousands making sure he bagged the perfect image for the folks back home.

An American President must do what he has to do in these difficult political times.

But it wasn’t all about domestic politics for Joe Biden, although the images beamed back to the States should make him and his campaign advisers happy.

Everyone knew what Biden’s Irish visit was about apart from the sulking British press

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Joe Biden’s visit to Ireland contained some hard messages for us

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Joe Biden braves the rain in Carlingford

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He really wanted to come to Ireland. He loves the place. With more distant cousins than you can shake a genealogical tree at, Irish Joe from Delaware feels very much at home here, among his chosen people.

[ As it happened: Day one of Joe Biden's visit ]

To be sure but it makes him so giddy with Irish pride that sometimes he gets carried away and says the wrong thing.

And that makes people on this side of the pond happy too, because we love nothing more than a good laugh. Ever considerate, Joe Biden came bearing gifts. He didn’t let the first day of his visit pass without obliging with a most delicious verbal gaffe.

That it was delivered in a public house made it even better, particularly as it involved him inadvertently naming a popular drink which mixes lager and stout.

Joe Biden, so delighted to be with his tribe, couldn’t help but mention one of those cousins – rugby hero Rob Kearney who recently “beat the hell out of the Black and Tans!”

The man is a tonic.

Such is his misty eyed affection for the old sod – or the old sodden, as it was in Co Louth on Wednesday – he even finds a silver lining in dark clouds and dreary downpours.

As he stood high on a cold and wet outcrop on the seaward edge of a ruined castle, a half-drowned Irish journalist roared up a question from below.

“How do you like the weather?”

The 80-year-old president, snug under a baseball cap, gazed down at the miserable reporter and then looked out on to the grey waters of Carlingford Lough.

“It’s fine! It’s Ireland!”

Beside him, not looking so snug under his new baseball cap, stood Tánaiste Micheál Martin.

If only his opponents, when analysing and critiquing the achievements of successive governments, would only take the same approach as Joe: “It’s fine! It’s Ireland!”

The trip to the 13th-century Carlingford Castle was the first of a busy list of engagements in the Republic, culminating with a public address in Mayo, in front of St Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina, on Friday night.

His every movement is covered by the travelling White House press pool. No detail is too trivial. Everything they observe is reported back.

So we knew when he was leaving Belfast for Dublin and who was with him and when his plane touched down and who was with him as he drove North towards Louth in his armoured vehicle, which is known as The Beast.

This nugget was filed after he left Ulster University for the airport: “The pool spotted Biden in the Beast as he drove by, but could not 100% make out the woman he was sitting next to in the car.”

The weather in Dundalk was awful. But the forecast for Carlingford in the afternoon was biblical.

It meant the crowds were not as big as they might have been, but some hardy souls made it on to the roundabouts to wave their little Stars and Stripes as the motorcade passed. Flashes of high-vis yellow down side roads and boreeens were proof of the huge garda operation under way.

No sign of any big names from the American news networks, though. Although Donie from CNN pitched up in the press centre.

The furze blazed yellow bright on the mountains on the way to the sea and, for a time, it looked like the forecasters might have been too pessimistic. Through the village of Lordship – where the President’s great great grandfather Finnegan was baptised – and on past Cooley Kickhams GAA club to the shores of the Lough.

And the rain bucketing down. There were American and Irish flags stuck in hedges and flying from teleporters and a few houses festooned in bunting. Some houses definitely had a recent lick of whitewash.

The children held up home-made messages. “Welcome Home, Cousin Joe.” “Cead Mile Failte, Cousin Joe.”

A 15-year-old boy behind the crash barrier held up a painting of the President. “I did it in a day,” he shouted over the journalists, penned behind a barrier.

Yellow wallflowers grew in the crevices on the castle walls. Higher up those walls was where the president and Tánaiste would pose for their photos. A pipe band welcomed them.

The weather plays havoc with the pipes, so conditions weren’t ideal. The pipers were frozen to the marrow in their kilts and short jackets, but they played their hearts out as the wind whipped around them.

“It isn’t every day you get to play for the most powerful man in the world” said one of them afterwards.

No member of the Irish media was allowed near the president or the Tánaiste – that was a pleasure reserved for the American press by the visiting American White House team.

The Irish contingent were confined to an area beneath their viewing platform and instructed to stand in against the wall, like mountain sheep sheltering from a storm, as otherwise they might spoil the nice photo of the president with the sea in the background. It was the bay from which his great-great-grandfather set sail all those years ago.

They couldn’t move anywhere else because, as one young American aide declared, “the [Secret] Service won’t allow it”.

These officers strolled around the perimeter, some of them toting binoculars the size of organ pipes.

Finally, after two hours in the rain, the two main men appeared. They stood on the platform in their caps and had their photos taken.

Joe Biden looked down.

“Don’t jump over!” he cried.

It was an option, to be honest.

“Just not now!”

The Tánaiste pointed out places of interest, apparently.

The president’s sister blew a kiss from the platform to nobody in particular.

Then they left for Dundalk. It was too wet and cold to stop and talk to the people who had waited in the rain with their posters.

[ Biden’s fleeting visit to Dundalk: ‘Was that it? I waited hours for this fella’ ]

The motorcade moved on to Dundalk town where the president visited an ice-cream parlour and, miraculously, nobody offered him anything with Guinness in it. It was all very wholesome.

He then went to the Windsor public house, which was not chosen because of the Windsor Framework because nobody in politics or the diplomatic service could have that much of a sense of humour.

The president will visit our President on Thursday morning.

He can tell Michael D all about Rob Kearney and the Irish team beating the hell out of the Black and Tans.

And Michael D can smile and put him right on that, and also for calling proud Corkman Micheál “a son of Louth” and prime minister.

If the Secret Service allows him to.

And, dear God, don’t let them shoot the dogs.