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John Drennan: Mr Kenny goes to Washington, and isn't dwarfed amid empire's panoply

AT Washington's inspirational Second World War Memorial, a newly married bride clad in a glowing cream wedding gown walks among the fountains and the cherry blossoms that are streaked by a timorous March light.

As her husband joins her and they hold hands in that way couples who are in love do, I reflect that a war memorial is a curious place to be on your wedding day. But then, to often largely unsmiling Irish eyes, America is a strange land.

Perhaps the couple may have been en route to read the inspiring words of the little-known author Walter Lord about the Battle of Midway.

Lord's observation, "They had no right to win. Yet they did, and in doing so they changed the course of a war . . . Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit -- a magic blend of skill, faith and valor -- that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory," is equally relevant to every aspect of human endeavour, from marriage and the building of a family right through to our urgent need to rebuild our defeated, cynical Vichy state.

Of course, such is the extent of national despair in Ireland that any politician even attempting to raise such sentiments will be shooed out the door with a chorus of boos. We are, in part because of our colonial experience, a nation far more in love with the myths of defeat. But, though our soft-slipper-wearing liberal intelligentsia are more likely to celebrate the defeat of America in Vietnam than its victory in the Second World War, our new Taoiseach never has subscribed to that view.

Mr Kenny also surely understands the applicability of Lord's sentiments to his own political journey. If proof were needed of the aphrodisiac qualities that come with power, nothing epitomises this more than the transformation of Enda Kenny in Washington last week.

For decades -- whether at the Galway races or anywhere else -- Fine Gael was outside the tent wondering what was that warm liquid substance trickling down their necks.

On Thursday, at the presentation of the shamrock, as the media were corralled behind a rope in the White House and treated with the special contempt that the rich and powerful reserve for journalists, Fine Gael was, for once, standing contentedly on the red carpet.

It, rather than Fianna Fail, is now at the top table with President Obama and mingles with the Bonfire of the Vanities-style millionaires and billionaires, the American ward bosses and corporate lawyers who decide how the world lives. And astonishingly, for many of us, amid the gold drapes, the chilly marble splendour of Capitol Hill, and even Obama, Deputy . . . sorry, Taoiseach Enda Kenny is right at home.

It helps of course that, unlike the other guy, he is clean and presentable and at least looks somewhat like a leader. But as his hair shines beneath the glittering White House chandeliers and the rounds of spontaneous applause roll, in it is clear they actually love this guy.

In truth -- and in a way it is touching -- last week Taoiseach Kenny appeared to be equally shocked about how he had got to where he is today. After his meeting with Obama, Enda stands before the throbbing members of the media, saying, "I've just come out from the Oval Office," and stops.

The caesura is a momentary admission by Enda that even he cannot believe where he has ended up. But, in the celebrated Oval Office, it really is the broth of a boy from Mayo called Enda who is looking with the adoring eyes of a post-coital virgin bride into Obama's more "experienced" visage as the first black President of America compliments Kenny on his "historic win".

For a moment the US President's praise appears to be excessive, until I realise I once claimed it would be far easier for a black man to become the President of America than for a Fine Gael TD from Mayo to be Taoiseach.

The reason for Enda's lovelorn glances soon become apparent, when the US President offers him the boon of a Presidential visit to Ireland. It is delightful enough that Enda had within a week of becoming Taoiseach secured that

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which had been shut out when it came to Brian Cowen, but what makes it even better for Mr Kenny is that, just as the sheen will inevitably begin to come off his bright new Government of all the OAPs, they will be reinvigorated by the visit of Obama.

Mr Kenny makes plenty of other hay too, though as he notes the visit of Obama "in this time of challenge is a unique statement of confidence" in our country. Implied in the text is a subtle warning to Europe that Enda has more friends than Frau Merkel.

It is important to note that Kenny is no supplicant quasi-colonial governor looking for a handout. Within an Oval Office that is smaller than many of the sun rooms built during the excesses of the Celtic Tiger, Enda and Obama chill out together with all of the ease of two golfing buddies about to have a couple of beers.

And, as Obama praises Enda for the capacity he believes he has to rebuild "confidence" in Ireland, there are reasons why Obama is so keen on the new cat in town. Outside of the natural taste all politicians have for the primal scent of success, Mr Obama has an election coming up in less than two years. It's time for Barrack to start getting cosy with Paddy again.

Afterwards as -- like Obama himself -- I disappear for a sneaky White House cigarette, I reflect upon the fantastical nature of the journey Kenny has made.

Little more than a decade has passed since the ceiling of the Mansion House shone with 1,000 points of light as Michael Noonan wowed the assembled media with promises of a new 'social contract'. In the middle of the performance, a pallid figure clad in a grey gabardine coat walked in unnoticed and sat down without causing a rustle in the indifferent media ranks.

Two years later, in a very different world, I met the new Fine Gael leader who was sharing a couple of pints with his gentlemanly driver Liam Cody. It was a pleasant affair, but, as the crowd milled around -- once again without noticing the future Taoiseach -- Kenny looked like a man who was in a terrible hurry to get somewhere, without quite knowing how.

Ten years later, on Thursday, Kenny finally arrived at the perfect place he had been looking for. One could understand his excitement, for when you walk through Washington and gaze in awe at the white marble Doric columns of the US Congress, you realise you are exploring the last of the great Western empires.

Washington is also, like the rest of America, still curiously gauche. They talk on chat shows with excited delight about dreams such as how science could teach us to talk to dolphins. But perhaps our sneering European foxes fail to realise that a willingness to ask simple questions and to dream impossible dreams is, in America, known as the frontier spirit.

In fairness, the absence of smiling Irish eyes is on occasions understandable, for our American friends are somewhat too authoritarian for the more lackadaisical Irish. After three days of being barked at and whistled at, some of us among the media begin to construct a reality TV programme called Eamon Dunphy Goes to America.

In a country where there are rather too many cops with whistles for one's liking, and where an entirely innocent man could be convicted of about 12 crimes in a day if he were caught, the mood is summarised by the comment, "It's day two, and Mr Dunphy has just been shot for the second time by a police officer."

But some law and order is a small price to pay to avoid the delights of our nation state where rogue bankers holiday in their wives' overseas properties and junkies openly smoke heroin off tinfoil yards from shuttered police stations full of officers on overtime busy at their paperwork.

When it comes to Enda in America, meanwhile, his joy is understandable for one other critical reason -- no other Taoiseach has so defined his persona from the lexicon of American politics. Irish politicians have been extraordinarily insular. Indeed, when it comes to the last few taoisigh, one struggled to see beyond a parish in Dublin while the other struggled to believe anything worthwhile existed beyond Clara.

But Mr Kenny appears at a deep level to understand the connections between Ireland and America. Few nations other than America have cherished the idea of liberty more than Ireland. Our heroes, such as Wolfe Tone, O'Connell and Parnell, were creatures of the same revolutionary but progressive Enlightenment that forged Paine, Franklin Jefferson and the American Revolution. This shared history means the White House is, for the Irish, a place where one comes home.

Mr Kenny's instinctive empathy with the American spirit is all the more serendipitous, for how America defines itself is where Ireland should be: these gauche American dreamers believe in freedom, accountability and the capacity to reinvent.

The fact that America seized his imagination so totally meant we should have always realised that when it comes to his theory of the state Mr Kenny's instincts were progressive. But, paradoxically, in the first few years of his leadership of Fine Gael, our new Taoiseach's very public love affair with JF Kennedy actually hampered his career. The problem was that Camelot was built on steely ambition mingled with the sort of vicious infighting and corruption that would have caused even Charles Haughey to cough. Enda, in contrast, had been a dreamy broth of a Western Playboy who had, even by the standards set by the Irish mammy, strayed well past the normal allocation of time allowed for bachelor frolics.

The difference between Enda dozing in the leaba as the soft afternoon sunshine caressed his unlined face, and the cruel but necessary strength of a Kennedy, left Fine Gael's blond new leader dangerously open to the charge of being a fake.

But just as no country does reinvention better than America, so Mr Kenny has, through the eight years of trial and resilience, redefined his own persona.

He has suffered in the crucible and, merely by surviving, been given the chance to shape his, and our, destiny.

And the intriguing feature about Enda's visit to America is that -- unlike poor Biffo, who was drowned by the company of even his political equals -- Kenny is not dwarfed by his surroundings. When he speaks at Capitol Hill, the interior is as imperial as the outside. Yet, amid the latticed intricate gold leaf patterns in the high domes and the muscle and glitter of all that marble, he is comfortable.

It helps, when Enda returns to his 2007 theme of his grandfather James McGinley -- the lighthouse keeper who fought off waves as big as skyscrapers -- "the first and last Irishman" that no nation does high falutin' sentiment better than America.

We 'clever' Irish foxes may wince at the florid rhetoric about "the cycles, we are one people, the family of man . . . our horizons are fluid. They travel with us as we go," and, "my grand-uncle the lighthouse keeper on the Brandos River in Texas".

But, amid the claims that "ours were the genes that built America" and dodgy puns about how "there is no one as Irish" as Barack "O'Bama" from Offaly, there is plenty of tough political content.

Throughout the week Kenny consistently hammers home the point that while American multinationals employ 95,000 Irish citizens, our companies employ 82,000 Americans across 50 states.

As Kenny adds that Ireland is also the 13th-largest foreign direct investor into America, the Taoiseach is staking a serious claim that in that part of the world where we are free from our European masters, Ireland is not a nation of economic beggars.

And as he makes it clear that the quiet death of government that occurred during the Cowen era is over, and under the Fine Gael equivalent of 'glasnost' a bright new government is "open for business", he still is no JFK.

But in trying to understand belatedly who Mr Kenny is, we have begun to wonder if there is a touch of the Ronald Reagans surrounding him. No offence intended -- this was the President who brought the Soviet empire down. And he made an America which had lost confidence in itself feel proud once again.

In dealing with where Mr Kenny must go, I shall return to the fable of the superiority of the hedgehog over the fox.

The fox might know a million little things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

We can only hope that, when it comes to our struggle against an evil empire of bureaucrats and bankers we must conquer, Mr Kenny is another hedgehog who, like Reagan after the uncertainty of the Carter era, knows his other great task is to rebuild the confidence and the morale of the people.

On leaving America I am struck by one final small point. We laugh at "stupid" Americans because they will believe in anything. Then we congratulate ourselves because we are "sophisticated" Europeans who believe in nothing. Perhaps it's time to ask who the "stupids" really are.

Sunday Independent

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