February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
But then again, maybe not. There are a fair few voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio who are concerned about the peace process and the ultimate fate of the island their ancestors came from.
In 2000, Al Gore won Pennsylvania by 4 percentage points. George Bush won Ohio by precisely the same amount. No wonder then that the candidates are spending so much time in both.
And no wonder that the word was about in recent days that the Kerry-Edwards campaign would not in the least mind if an Irish presidential forum were held in either one, or indeed Florida, land of sunlight and electoral glare.
Clearly, there is a strong desire on the part of many Irish-American Democrats to see a return to the days of Bill Clinton and an interventionist presidential hand in the struggle to make Northern Ireland a place that can truly claim democratic normalcy — with a small “d”.
Certainly, the Kerry campaign has been playing to that drumbeat, what with an Irish statement late last year, a far more comprehensive one this past spring, a jibe at President Bush over “leadership” on the eve of Bush’s June departure for County Clare, a brief acknowledgement of Ireland in the Democratic platform followed by a clear-cut pledge on presidential intervention in the Kerry-Edwards policy book, “Our Plan For America.”
On the surface at least, it seems that the Democrats have been making all the running.
President Bush, meanwhile, has been to Ireland twice, but in contexts other than the North.
But there’s more to all this than what presidents do or don’t do, and what presidential candidates say they will do. Of particular interest lately is the role of the State Department, both in an overt sense and behind the scenes.
There were groans from many when it became clear in the early days of this Bush administration that the State Department would be getting Ireland back from the National Security Council.
During the Clinton years, the NSC was the stewpot in which the Irish issue was, after an initial reluctance, well stirred. The NSC works out of the White House so it was easy enough for Clinton to be involved, or seen to be so.
The State Department conjures up a different image. Indeed, for many Irish Americans, the pile on C Street has long been seen as an anglophile club where no Irish concerns need apply.
There was more than a grain of truth in this perception. But times have moved on a bit since the James Baker days, when even the suggestion of U.S. involvement in the search for a settlement in Ireland was brushed aside as if it was an annoying gnat.
Baker, many will recall, made a bit of a show of himself at the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996. In his foreign policy speech to the GOP faithful, he took Clinton to task for his polices on Ireland and especially the White House strategy of dealing face-to-face with Sinn F