Inside File A twilight’s last gleaming

By Ray O’Hanlon

At the end of it all, the room was empty and refreshingly cool. The air conditioning was winning the battle now that the 150 or so people had filtered out into the sultry Washington night. An empty beer bottle, well-known Irish brand, sat upright beside the dais where only a short while before, President Clinton had delivered a speech that will go down in Irish-American lore as his "Redneck Speech."

The deserted room, chandeliers still blazing, was itself a fitting metaphor. There had been a more than vague sense of last hurrah about the evening’s event, one in which the president cast his eye back over eight years and ahead a mere seven months to the end of his presidency.

The event that had filled the ballroom atop the Hotel Washington last week was the presentation of the "Irish American Democrat of the Year" award to Terry McAuliffe, a personal friend of Clinton’s and a seemingly priceless asset to the Democratic Party in this election year.

McAuliffe is the party’s money man, its chief buckraker. Not just that. He has broken all records for campaign money raised, so much so that there will apparently be enough after this year’s elections to attach a wing to the future Clinton presidential library in Arkansas that will tell the story of Clinton’s peacemaking efforts in Ireland.

Not surprising, then, that the crystal bowl being presented to McAuliffe was a big one.

Though McAuliffe was the night’s honoree, it was inevitable, of course, that Clinton’s speech would be the focal point of the evening. Clinton often answers questions on Northern Ireland at press conferences, but events where he delivers full speeches heavily related to the peace process are comparatively rare.

So this was one to be savored. Clinton can hold a room’s attention with ease. Sure, it helps to be president. But there have been dull presidents. Clinton ain’t one of them.

A master of self-deprecation, Clinton drew laugh after laugh poking fun at himself before getting down to the nitty gritty.

"When I took all that flack for getting involved in the Irish peace process, and I was being ridiculed by the members of the other party, Secretary [James] Baker, a man I actually like quite a lot, did call it Gullible’s Travels," Clinton said. "None of the elitists really thought I ought to do it. But all us blue-collar rednecks thought it was a pretty good idea.

"But I want you to know that it was tough. And there was a huge part of the permanent government that thought I had taken leave of my senses."

The room, full as it was with people who could lay claim to somewhat elite status themselves, burst into loud applause, cheers and whistles. Clinton wasn’t so much in Washington now, but back on the stump somewhere, out there, in vast America. He’s not running for office again, but you could see that he wished he was.

Clinton, at this point, turned his speech into a campaign pitch for Vice President Al Gore and Hillary before turning at the end to McAuliffe, a man who, if the president was to be taken literally, could meet a miser one minute and have him showering him with money the next.

With the presentation and speeches over, Clinton, beaming, shook hands with all but the hard core hovering over the food and drink at the rear of the room. And then he was back to the White House, just across the street. The now scaled-down party moved from the ballroom of political romance to a long open-air balcony on one side of the hotel that overlooked the presidential mansion. The talk turned to Gore and George W. Bush, Hillary, too, and very soon the weather. A furious storm was blowing in from the southwest. Within minutes there was a veritable monsoon with huge cracks of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning.

Perhaps the political gods were reminding this most political town that power in a democracy is but earth-bound and fleeting. Clinton, snug in the big house only yards away, was certainly aware of that now. A week is a long time in politics, but seven months is no time at all when you’re so clearly enjoying yourself. And if there was one clear message from Clinton on this night, it was that he was now well and truly enjoying his job.

As well he should. Not many blue-collar rednecks in this world get the chance to grab and hold that same world’s attention for eight years, 32 seasons, almost 3,000 days and nights — and an hour on one particular night in a room full of Irish cheering lustily with one voice.

Walter wants Hillary

Rep. Joe Crowley has been allowed enjoy the fruits of incumbency to the point where no less a person than Hillary Rodham Clinton turned up at a fund-raiser for his reelection campaign last November. But Crowley is not running unopposed in his largely Queens district. City Councilman Walter McCaffrey has thrown down an internal Democratic party challenge to Crowley’s bid for another term in the House of Representatives. The two face each other in an all-Irish primary in September, but in the meantime, Walter wants Hillary to play fair and turn up for a fund-raiser he’s holding on July 11. "IF" will be keeping an eye on this one.

One-ad

With Aer Lingus now part of the "oneworld" alliance of airlines, the Irish carrier’s global profile will be on the rise given that it is prominently named in a series of ads running in all manner of high brow and glossy publications. Eight carriers now belong to the alliance and the ad has Aer Lingus near the top of its alphabetical listing of the oneworld club.

Hard to believe that only a few years ago Aer Lingus services over the Atlantic had almost descended to shark level. Now the carrier is miles high with the big jets. Boy, but it’s great to be one of the gang.

They said

€ "It is also becoming apparent that Irish writers today are generally not drinkers. The writers’ pub, the deadly pint and chaser of their forebears, have been supplanted by home life and parenthood . . . " Brian Lavery in a New York Times report on the Impac Dublin Literary Award.

€ "For too long relations between Britain and Ireland have been filtered exclusively through the lens of Northern Ireland." Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Mandelson, speaking to Cork Chamber of Commerce.