An Irish Voice E-Book

Niall O'Dowd

• Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 460

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

How a typical Irish emigrant rose to a position of influence at the highest levels of US and Irish politics. A remarkable firsthand account of an Irish emigrant who began as a part-time footballer and house-painter and became a journalist, author, founder and publisher of two newspapers, a magazine and website, as well as a leading advocate for immigration reform for the 'illegal' Irish in the United States. He played a pivotal role in the Northern Ireland peace process, securing a US visa for Gerry Adams in 1994 and acting as intermediary between the White House and Sinn Féin during a critical time in the peace negotiations. Niall O'Dowd has been described as: 'the authentic voice of the Irish in America, who has more knowledge of this community than almost anyone else alive,' by Jim Dwyer, New York Times and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Leseprobe

NiallODowd-for e-book

Table of Contents

Title PageChapter 1 - Inside Obama's White HouseChapter 2 - A Soldier in Hillary's Losing BattleChapter 3 - The Wisdom of BillChapter 4 - How Hillary Earned her SpursChapter 5 - My Father's DreamChapter 6 - California Here I ComeChapter 7 - San Francisco DreamingChapter 8 - The City of Broad ShouldersChapter 9 - The LeavetakingChapter 10 - Not So Welcome to AmericaChapter 11 - Trying to Fit InChapter 12 - Building SIte BluesChapter 13 - Animal House and Falling in LoveChapter 14 - Go West Young ManChapter 15 - A Death in the FamilyChapter 16 - Return to AmericaChapter 17 - Starting a NewspaperChapter 18 - Publisher and Chief BottlewasherChapter 19 - Irish 1, Moonies 0Chapter 20 - Farewell to JennieChapter 21 - Friends or Lovers Chapter 22 - A Political AwakeningChapter 23 - Tough Times in San FranciscoChapter 24 - A Texan Friend in NeedChapter 25 - Go East Young ManChapter 26 - Into the DarknessChapter 27 - A Man of Two CountriesChapter 28 - The Irish VoiceChapter 29 - Tackling the Northern QuestionChapter 30 - Getting Bill Clinton On BoardChapter 31 - Clinton Wins the White HouseChapter 32 - Setting the SceneChapter 33 - Gathering PaceChapter 34 - Completing the A-TeamChapter 35 - Ready To GoChapter 36 - A Dangerous JourneyChapter 37 - Into The CauldronChapter 38 - Prelude to a VisaChapter 39 - The Visa BattleChapter 40 - The San Diego IncidentChapter 41 - The Media Go WildChapter 42 - Adams ArrivesChapter 43 - A Rock Star ReceptionChapter 44 - Tough Words at the White HouseChapter 45 - Waiting for the CeasefireChapter 46 - IRA BreakdownChapter 47 - 9/11 and the AftermathChapter 48 - Battling for the Undocumented IrishChapter 49 - Irish Central LaunchesAbout the AuthorDedication and acknowledgementsCopyright information

Chapter 1

Inside Obama’s White House

When you step into the White House it is an extraordinary experience. The immensity of the seat of power in the most powerful of all countries hits you with full force.

On the walls are arrayed the predecessors of Barack Obama, the man we have come to honour this night of 17 March, St Patrick’s Day 2009. The fine china and cutlery from Jackie Kennedy’s state dinner service lies within touch, mounted on the wall. The silver goblets that Andrew Jackson used at his state events in the 1830s are all present and accounted for. For a country that is so ambivalent about the general topic of history the American White House reeks of it.

And tonight we are witnessing a slice of history that John F Kennedy and Andrew Jackson, the old Indian hater, could only have dreamed of – though in Jackson’s case it might have been a nightmare!

The first ever black president of the United States, Barack Obama, is holding court for the Irish in the house that kept Irish and blacks out for so long. The ‘No Irish Need Apply’ signs only came down in the lifetime of many present here tonight. And the idea of a black man as president was the stuff of pure fiction and bad jokes only a few years ago.

Yet here we are: one group who came as slaves, and so many of the other in coffin ships. This is our night, to celebrate with this young African American man who has capsized the stars.

On the way to the East Wing the crowds are moving slowly, taking in the significance of the occasion. Marines in their crisp dress uniforms stand by, ready at a second’s notice to spring into action to help the guests.

Even the coat check is intriguing, once the site of the White House private cinema where Jack and Jackie watched movies, where George W. Bush invited Ted Kennedy soon after his inauguration to watch a film about the Cuban missile crisis. Little did he know that Kennedy hated to watch footage about his beloved brothers.

But that is the past and Kennedy is not here tonight, laid low by dreadful illness, a brain tumour that has brought the lion of the senate to his knees, and will cause his untimely death five months’ later, on 25 August, 2009. It is a shame, because he helped create tonight with his extraordinary support for Obama at a critical time in the primaries. That booming voice will not be heard tonight, and the event is a little poorer for its absence.

The guests stare at each other furtively. Who got on the list and who didn’t is the great parlour game that has been resonating throughout the Irish American community for the past few weeks. But the Obama folk have focused heavily on their Chicago political friends, not necessarily Irish. That left many in the Irish American community out and very sore at the prospect.

Those of us who are there feel the rub of the green, the sigh of relief that we are still on the list. For others, including one Irish leader who stood outside, hoping that someone would shoo him in from the cold, it was a night to forget.

After we mount the stairs we are standing in the sweeping corridor walkway which connects the two parts of the East Wing. In the distance Hillary Clinton comes into view, alone, somehow vulnerable in the place she once called home and had hoped to do so again. She is Secretary of State, a powerful figure, but tonight she enters alone. We talk, as we always do. She asks about my family, I about hers. She remembers everyone’s names, knows the issues, but you can tell also that she knows this is not her night. Before her conqueror arrives she slips away.

The band plays on as the guests gather, and soon President Obama and Michelle come striding down the corridor, accompanied by Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his wife Mary. It is, in the best sense of the phrase, ‘a sight to behold’.

President Obama in person is remarkably slight, thin as a spindle. They say he will only play basketball in a track suit in order to hide his skinny legs. It is the smile that captivates, however, the broad flashing megawatt grin that he uses so effectively when greeting everybody. His body language this night is very relaxed, very open. He is clearly among friends. The Chicago bosses gather round him like bees at a honeycomb. He is the biggest star in the universe and they know it.

Michelle is striking, much more so than he. She has the duskier complexion, reflecting her broader African roots. She is also the warmer of the two, grabbing people and hugging. He stands back and waits for people to come to him.

The President and Taoiseach speak twice, once in the East Room and once in the West Room in order to satisfy the 300 or so present. Obama is utterly at ease. He knows this crowd. He grew up with Irish pols in Chicago and many were his mentors. Somewhere in the audience, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is smiling quietly. His father made JFK and now he has helped make Barack Obama.

And what a politician this president is. When Brian Cowen accidentally begins reading from Obama’s speech on the autocue, he pretends to read from Cowen’s speech when it is his turn, smoothing over the moment and utterly putting his guests at ease.

One of his close advisors told me that Obama wanted to move into the White House as soon as he could, so he could still remember what it was like to put the garbage out and have a normal household for his kids, before all the various staff took over the everyday duties of daily life. As an example of how distanced one can become in that sort of situation, Nancy Soderberg, who was Deputy National Security Advisor for President Clinton, told me she found it shocking when she had to hail her own cab instead of having a limousine fetch her from home the day after she left the White House.

Unlike previous occupants, Obama had never entered that bubble of being a governor where normal life fades and is replaced by a battery of worker bees ready to carry out your every whim, and he had not been a senator for very long.

This night he was happy. As he surveyed the room, that golden smile flashed again and again; he had made it and no one could take it away from him. We Irish certainly had no desire to. We loved seeing history being made and having an underdog rewrite it.

As for me, I reflected how, just a few months ago, I had been working very hard to defeat him. Not anymore, he was my president now too. But, honestly, I never thought it would happen.

Chapter 2

A Soldier in Hillary’s Losing Battle

‘Niall, have you met Barack?’ asked Senator Hillary Clinton, taking me by the arm. We were in the ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. It was July 2008 and the presidential election had entered its decisive stage.

Against all the odds, the first-time Senator from Illinois had defeated the heavy favourite, Hillary Clinton, who I had avidly supported for the Democratic nomination. Now we were all playing the good guy game, her key supporters meeting for the first time with the young man who had overturned our world, all in the name of Democratic unity.

Though the flesh was willing, the spirit was weak. Everyone seemed ill at ease. Even Obama himself lacked the radiant presence we had come to expect. When Hillary addressed us, he stood with arms folded, eyes fixed in the middle distance, betraying all in his body language. For Hillary, this moment was an especially tough blow. Yet she had soldiered on through so many crises in her life that she bore this one bravely too. She certainly looked better than when I was backstage with her after the final primaries a few weeks before.

* * *

The venue back then was telling, a cavernous basement in a public building in lower Manhattan. The lack of light and grim glares from campaign staff added to the sense of foreboding doom. The numbers would not lie and Hillary was crashing to defeat despite winning most of the delegates in the late states. She looked pale and tired, sniffling from a cold and strangely vulnerable. Her rhetoric was still upbeat, her husband was still plunging into the crowds with reckless abandon and shaking hands, but the Fat Lady was busy warbling off stage.

Now, in Washington’s Mayflower, she was looking more composed, but I recalled sitting in this very hotel about a year earlier and hearing such an upbeat assessment of her chances that defeat was out of the question. In July 2007, about thirty of her closest supporters gathered at the Mayflower for an all-day seminar on the campaign. We were convinced that it was all over bar the shouting. Barack Obama was a new face who was highly unlikely to run, and if he did was sure to be crushed. The woman who hoped to be the future leader of America had gathered her brains trust here to work out the plan of campaign that would land her in the White House – or so we all believed. We were wrong.

We heard from all the heavyweights: Harold Ickes, Bill Clinton’s old enforcer, pollster Mark Penn who assured us that the trends were completely in our favour. I remember one brief moment of doubt on looking around the room and figuring that everyone there was over fifty. But that was a fleeting thought. These were the pros who had delivered an unknown Arkansas governor to the White House on two occasions. They were hardly likely to fail with a far better known candidate, albeit his wife. On the campaign trail Hillary’s victory had seemed assured until the voters actually cast their ballots.

The most upbeat assessment was by Terry McAuliffe, Hillary’s chief fundraiser, who stated flatly that defeat looked out of the question. I would remember those words in the months to come as the impossible took shape.

A few months later I heard the same McAuliffe mantra. It was November 2007 and we were in Winterset, Iowa, in a little country hall deep in the heart of the Irish belt in a state where over 18 per cent of people were of Irish extraction. Nearby were the bridges of Madison County, made famous by the bestselling book by Robert James Waller and the Clint Eastwood film of the same name. Not far away was the farm field where, in October 1979, 300,000 Catholic Iowans had gathered to hear Pope John Paul speak to Middle America.

I had spoken ahead of McAuliffe to the fifty or so Iowans present and told them what an extraordinary job Hillary and Bill Clinton had done in helping bring peace to their ancestral land. They seemed charmed by the Clintons and glad to hear of their good deeds in Ireland. All the signs pointed positive. Outside the snow was falling but the promise of spring and political renewal seemed in the air. Mc Auliffe told them, as he had told so many before, that Hillary was so far ahead everywhere that it was only a matter of counting the votes.

Somehow, somewhere it went tragically wrong. I think I know where. The night after the Winterset meeting, Saturday, 11 November, we were in Des Moines at the Jefferson Jackson dinner. Hosted by the Democratic Party, it allows the candidates to speak at length to over 10,000 Democrats crammed into the local state fair hall. It is also the first major media event of the primary season. It is a beauty contest, a night when the candidates put on their rouge and try to make the maximum impression. I was seated at one of Hillary’s tables with famed record producer Quincy Jones. The expectation was that she would hold her own with the mesmerizing young talent from Illinois who was threatening to pull off the huge upset.

When she spoke, Hillary was adequate. She was never the best speaker; is much better in intimate surroundings, talking quietly about the issues she cares most about, such as health care. That night her campaign had saddled her with a ludicrous refrain which had something to do with being able to stay in the kitchen to withstand the heat. She referred back to it again and again but it came across as phony and hokey.

Obama could not have been more different. He bounced onto the stage and commenced a thirty-minute oration on how the country was being steered in the wrong direction, a speech that had his exuberant supporters cheering and clapping. His cadence and rhythm was that of the old-time preacher. His rhetoric was from the gut, reflecting the disgust and despair in America at large with the Bush years. In spite of my Hillary sympathies, I found myself gripped by him as was everybody else.

Beside me there was a sudden commotion. The Hillary people had come for Quincy Jones, escorting him to the side of the stage for an urgent photo op with Hillary. It was a clear attempt at a diversion – to showcase a prominent black supporter at a key moment for her main opponent. It didn’t work, however – nothing would have – we were witnessing the birth of one of the most incredible political stories in American history.

The following day, David Gepsen of the local Des Moines Register called the Obama speech a defining moment. Coming from him it was like a pronouncement from the local Oracle. It felt like that too. Hillary never quite grabbed back the mantle of leadership after it.

Iowa proved to be a shocker of a magnitude that no one had predicted. Her gurus had expected about 150,000 people to vote in the Democratic caucus in Iowa and believed they had a winning majority at that level. In the event, 227,000 showed up, and as the busloads of Obama supports rolled in, the faces of the Clinton people got glummer and glummer. The final insult was when John Edwards shaded her for second place.

We felt like the Polish mounted cavalry that faced German tanks in September 1939 soon after the outbreak of the Second World War. We were that outdated and overpowered.

I spent days in New Hampshire as the campaign counted down and Hillary looked to be on the ropes from her shocking setback in Iowa. The Clinton canvassers were clearly being outgunned by the Obama machine. At every stoplight, at every town centre, the Obama message blared out and canvassers gathered to hoot and holler for their man.

Inside the Hillary headquarters, a shabby office in an anonymous office building, the mood was grim. The Iowa defeat had stunned the mandarins, setting off a cascade of finger pointing that would last to the very end of the campaign. Only the candidate herself seemed unperturbed, still resilient and confident despite what had happened.

Then Hillary pulled off a stunning upset in New Hampshire, and for a time it seemed that yet another chapter in the comeback saga of the Clinton family was about to unfold, but it was not to be.

Obama simply outorganized us. Whenever Hillary won a big state – and she won plenty – Obama would have locked up a caucus in a small state somewhere else where the Clinton Poo-bahs had neglected to organize, always keeping a critical margin ahead. It became like snakes and ladders, where we’d climb and tumble and climb again, always frustrated that he was just a few squares ahead of us.

I attended many Clinton campaign meetings and fundraisers during those fraught months. I was reminded vividly of the scene in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Robert Redford and Paul Newman keep wondering who is following and outsmarting them as they try to escape. Like Butch and Sundance we’d mutter, ‘Who are those guys?’ and promise to do better in the next stage.

The week of the Texas primary, I was at a fundraiser at the Dakota Building in Manhattan, famous as the location where, in December 1980, Beatle John Lennon was gunned down by Mark Chapman. It felt like a shooting this day too. Super Tuesday had just passed, Hillary had done well but not well enough, and now, for the first time, I could feel it in the air that her hard core supporters had lost heart. Even Hillary herself looked pale and wan and on her uppers. She knows she’s lost it, I thought.

She fussed around as usual, spent time with my daughter, Alana, signing a campaign poster for her and asking her about third grade. She’s a pro, I thought, one of the best ever. My heart went out to her. There was no stopping her and she was as fiery in her remarks as ever, drawing strength, as her husband always did, from the support around her and the love many there felt for her.

But the calculations had changed. There was nothing, short of an utter meltdown by Obama, that would give her victory. The game was up after Super Tuesday.

* * *

Now, a few months later, we were gathered in the ballroom of the Mayflower to pay homage to the new nominee of our party. In person, like many famous people close up, Barack looked impossibly young, hardly the face of a man ready to run the western world.

We spoke briefly. I asked him if he intended to go to Ireland. He flashed that wide grin. ‘Of course. I have relatives from there,’ he answered, referring to the Moneygall, County Offaly roots of his great great-grandfather, Falmuth Kearney. How soon would that be? ‘I need to get elected first, but I’ll definitely get over there,’ he stated, flashing that high wattage mile. He turned to meet with someone else, but then turned back. ‘I will definitely make it there as president,’ he said. I could almost feel Hillary wince.

On Tuesday, 4 November 2008, I stood on 125th street in Harlem, surrounded by African Americans and giant screens as one of the most extraordinary days in American history unfolded. I interviewed Shirley Waller, a seventy-year-old woman from South Carolina who had moved to Harlem from the Deep South years before. She was the great grand-daughter of a slave and had never thought this day would come. ‘I thank God I lived to see it.’

But there was still fear until the Pennsylvania result was announced – fear that somehow, some way the election would be stolen from them. The cheer that went up when the Keystone State went in the Obama column was an electric moment, as it signified certain victory. A black man was going to be president of the United States. Harlem rejoiced and it was a rare moment to share with them.

America had done it. Putting aside all the fear and negativity of the Bush years, the voters had reinvented their country and indeed the world. From Africa to Asia never again would the world look the same, with a man of colour leading the most powerful country in it.

On 20 January 2009 I stood with about a million and a half others in Washington DC as Obama was inaugurated. It was Mardi Gras and Super Bowl days all mixed up together. When Obama accepted the oath of office, a noise like rolling thunder spilled out across the stage and down through an audience that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was the sound of sheer exultation.

A few moments before, a helicopter had roared overhead, bearing the former president George Bush away to exile in Texas. The crowd began singing spontaneously, ‘Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye’. Thus in such absurd moments are political dynasties ended.

A few weeks earlier, Obama had shown his political smarts by appointing Hillary as Secretary of State. Declan Kelly, a Tipperary-born New York businessman, hosted a small brunch in her honour. He would later be named her economic envoy to Northern Ireland – an inspired choice, I thought, as he cared deeply about his home island and the issues it confronted in getting the peace process completed.

Over eggs and bacon in his Tribeca loft, Hillary held forth on the world as she saw it. She made clear that what she had experienced in Ireland would help shape her vision of the world. She spoke about the importance of special envoys such as George Mitchell to help mediate conflicts when heads of governments cannot do so. She spoke of her Irish experience of talking to previously untouchables on both sides. ‘We make peace with our enemies, not our friends,’ she remarked when I asked what the overwhelming lesson of the Irish peace process was for her.

That sounded right. I felt glad I had been able to help her and Bill to discover that. It had been a long journey for me.

Chapter 3

The Wisdom of Bill

The Clinton residence in Chappaqua, New York, a town of about 10,000 residents some thirty miles north of Manhattan, is in a cul de sac named Old House Lane. The neighbours are far closer than you might expect for the residence of a former President and First Lady of the United States. They moved in on 6 January 2000, just before Bill left the White House and Hillary took over as US senator for New York from Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

It is a beautiful old white clapboard house situated on a few acres, ironically not far from the world headquarters of the now bankrupt Readers Digest empire, one of the most influential right wing publications in its heyday.

On this cool autumn evening in September 2002 it was finally action time for the 2008 Hillary for President campaign. Of course it wasn’t billed as such, just as a party for close friends. We were all part of a group cloyingly known as ‘Hill’s Angels’, essentially the core group tasked originally with winning her US senate seat and eventually the White House. No one would have described it as such that night, and her presidential run was many years away, but, equally, no one was under any illusions. ‘Will Hillary run for president? Does a bear shit in the woods?’ as one close Clinton aide said to me pungently.

A number of us had gathered at the sprawling residence where a marquee had been set up to accommodate the attendance. Hillary greeted everyone personally, remembering spouses and kids’ names in that effortless way that she and Bill have mastered. She was dressed in a summer outfit and looked more relaxed than I had seen her in years. She was clearly enjoying her term in the senate and had proven herself a dedicated and talented legislator. Now came the next step.

I knew some were urging her to run in 2004, not a strategy I favoured. The events of 9/11 had made Bush into a two-term president in my opinion, and Hillary, with only two years in the senate, would face withering criticism that she was a carpetbagger who took the seat only to run for the White House.

As the evening progressed, my wife Debbie and I took a stroll through the residence. It was clear that there was a definite geographic division of labour between the couple. Bill’s study, office and gym were all on the east side of the house, while Hillary’s rooms were on the opposite side. His library was packed roof to ceiling with books and, incongruously, some gym equipment. I spied three Irish titles on his shelf: a book of poems by Seamus Heaney, Conor O’Clery’s book, Daring Diplomacy, about the Clinton work on the Irish peace process, and George Mitchell’s book, Making Peace, on the same subject.

Outside we found Bill Clinton sitting back in an easy chair, holding court with a few friends on the state of American politics. As night began to fall, we joined the inner circle and listened to perhaps the greatest pure politician of his generation. He was discussing his favourite topic – how to win the White House – and spoke of the need to listen closely for the cadence of the times. Was it a time to run on a platform of change or to run on continuity and a steady compass? If someone was running for president, they had to know the mood music – what the American people were focused on that year – and be pitch perfect, he said.

As night drew in, the circle around Clinton grew and we hung on his words. He is always worth listening to. He is the son of a father he never knew [his father died in an accident before he was born], the stepson of an abusive alcoholic, the spurned candidate who only won the Democratic nomination in 1992 because all the insiders thought that Mario Cuomo, the popular governor of New York, was a shoo in and they decided not to run. When Cuomo pulled out, Clinton spreadeagled the field.

Now he was saying that if a politician was deaf to that mood music he or she could never succeed. Amazingly, he and Hillary made that mistake, by not running on a change agenda in 2008 six years later. No one except a complete outsider, an African American senator from Illinois, would pitch that note.

It is almost forgotten now, but Hillary’s support of the Iraq war was what doomed her at the start of the 2008 campaign. The necessity to stay onside on that issue with broad American public opinion was a fundamental mistake that many other politicians also made. Perhaps Hillary’s coterie can be blamed for looking past the primaries to the general election and being overconfident that she would win the nomination.

But that was all in the future back in October 2002. That night, I left Chappaqua with the clear belief that Hillary would run, not in 2004, but wait until 2008, having made a calculated decision that Bush was unbeatable in 2004, an election year bound to be overshadowed by the events of 9/11.

I was looking forward to her running for the White House in 2008. I had been there from the start of her political journey and before that for Bill’s first run for the White House.

Chapter 4

How Hillary Earned her Spurs

The call from Hillary Clinton in the autumn of 2000 could not have been more urgent. The soft money ban, in place in her senate race against Congressman Rick Lazio in New York, which had set maximum contributions at $2,500 for individuals, meant that she was almost out of funding with the crucial last few weeks in the race yet to come. Could I organise a major fundraiser, one that the president himself would attend if we could swing at least $150,000 in hard cash, she asked. I thought it over for a few seconds before responding that yes, I could do that. After putting down the phone I wondered if my enthusiasm had not overwhelmed my judgment. Getting 150 people separately to write a cheque for $1,000 was an uphill battle, particularly in a community where many held very mixed views on the Clinton White House.

Over the next few days I ransacked every filofax entry I had, and with enormous help from Steven Travers, one of my work associates, began calling around non-stop. I got some blunt refusals; others promised help but never delivered. The majority, however, hard-working Irish businessmen and women, were only too happy to oblige. Because of the Clintons’ extraordinary role in the Irish peace process there was a reservoir of goodwill and commitment there that had never been truly tapped. Many of the contributors were staunch Republican party members who appreciated above all else what the Clintons had done in Ireland. I discovered that the best way to fundraise was to get a few heavy hitters who could then bring in five or ten others, who could bring in a few more, in a sort of daisy chain reaction that ensured that we reached out the length and breadth of the Irish community in New York. Thus several leaders in the Irish community signed on as co-chairs. Soon the total began mounting, until I fully used up the favour bank I had built up over many years in New York. We passed the $100,000 mark and headed confidently for the magic $150,000. The Clinton staffers were obviously astonished. At the end of a long drawn out political campaign – the most expensive senate race in history – they thought they had tapped every conceivable donor and ethnic group, but here were the Irish, delivering.

On the night itself, some 200 or so of us packed the lobby and bar area of Fitzpatrick’s Hotel in midtown Manhattan. It was a crush, as it always is at Clinton functions, with everyone determined to get close enough to get a photograph with the world’s most famous couple. As MC and chief organiser I was run off my feet trying to cater to every big contributor. Worse, of course, the Clintons were late, as they always are, and Hillary arrived before Bill, throwing our programme into chaos. As always, Hillary was cool and calm despite the crush of bodies. One of the secrets often missed about the Clintons is how much they actually enjoy the flesh pressing part of the political game. Whereas most people would recoil from another sweaty room and hordes of excited devotees trying to grasp their hand, I have seen both Clintons thrive on it on many occasions.

When she began her senate race, Hillary was more standoffish, but by the end she was almost a match for her husband, one of the most electric personalities ever to light up a room. As First Lady, Hillary had often seemed aloof, and many of her supporters questioned whether the rough and tumble of political life as a candidate would suit her. They need not have worried. Hillary was also very comfortable with the press, something not generally realised because of all the scrutiny she has undergone. Once, when hosting her at a St Patrick’s Day event in 2000, there were throngs of media waiting to interrogate her upstairs in O’Neill’s restaurant. A small group of us huddled together downstairs to prepare her for possible questions. Midway through my briefing on Irish issues I realised she was actually looking forward to the grilling, to giving as good as she got and walking the tightrope of unscripted media appearances, which fewer and fewer politicians do. She strode upstairs almost eagerly, the light of battle in her eye, ready to face the klieg lights and the assembled horde.

On this night in October 2000, when I introduced Hillary I talked humorously, I hope, about the ‘Irish’ senate seat she was running for, one held by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Kevin Keating, William Buckley and many other Irish Americans, going back decades. Even though she wasn’t directly Irish, I said, we were going to accept her as one of our own, and no Italian like Lazio was going to take the ‘Irish’ seat. She enjoyed that and she launched into a spirited outline of all she and her husband had done for the Irish peace process. She was interrupted several times by tumultuous applause. After her remarks, Hillary went upstairs to a holding room to await her husband who had been delayed. I sat out in the front bar area where he was going to make his entrance, with some secret service people and John Fitzpatrick, a close personal friend and owner of the hotel and a man who had devoted enormous time and energy to the Clinton cause over the years.

Hillary joined us and we stood chatting for over ten minutes while waiting for the president to arrive. When he did, it was his usual bear-hugging, backslapping entrance, striding into the cordoned-off room and immediately becoming the centre of gravity. He posed for pictures with the bartender, with John Fitzpatrick and me. Then he and Hillary huddled together for a few moments, within earshot. Seeing them together for any extended period of time you cannot but be struck by the easy body language. Numerous books have been written, and indeed an entire industry has grown up, speculating on their relationship. Having seen them close up and so easy with each other on innumerable occasions, the answer seems obvious to me. Despite all the difficulties and trials of the past decade, they remain in love and indeed infatuated with each other.

She visibly relaxes in his company. He often plays the jokester, anxious to put her at her ease. He talks, she listens. He leans in, forming almost a protective barrier around her. She can be remote, tightlipped and distant in certain situations, but never around him. There have obviously been tradeoffs, as there are in most relationships, but they have stayed together for over thirty-five years, far longer than the relationships of many of their chief critics who espouse ‘family values’. On this evening he was advising her about an aspect of her campaign for senator. He has a computer-like facility to remember even the most arcane aspects of any political race and he was telling her the percentage of the vote he thought she needed to get in several upstate counties. ‘Governor Pataki got 71 per cent there in his last election’ he told her, referring to some remote New York state region, ‘I think you can get over 50 per cent’.

When he was in Dublin in 1995, in Cassidy’s bar, he regaled Congressman Tom Manton and me with the figures from almost every precinct in Queens from the 1992 presidential election. When he had finished and moved on, Manton, the Queens’ Democratic leader and an old-style boss, turned to me and said, ‘He knows more about votes in Queens than I do’.

When we entered the main lobby from our private meeting in the bar, you had the immediate sense of a room listing to one side, as the crush to meet the president became an unruly scene. Perfectly poised businessmen and women who were calmly sipping cocktails and munching on hors d’oeuvres, suddenly dropped all pretence of sophistication and rushed to meet and greet Clinton. With great difficulty we established a receiving line and I stood beside the Clintons to ensure that everyone they met was properly introduced. It is always astonishing to watch people’s behaviour in Bill Clinton’s presence. ‘Clutchers’ is the secret service name for those who just won’t let go, and there were quite a few in our crowd. One woman in particular did everything but strip in front of him, rubbing her breasts against him and clutching on to his hand until I gently disengaged it. I saw Hillary signalling to me when another woman engaged her and her husband in a discussion about her dreams, which included the nugget that she dreamt about Bill every night. These people apart, the Clintons seemed to genuinely enjoy the warmth of the welcome. Bill, as one aide said, is addicted to ‘junk love’ – the extraordinary reaction he gets from crowds. This evening he was a trifle weary by the end of the handshaking, however, and asked me in a humorous aside if I was going out into the street to bring people in to meet him.

After his brief speech I escorted him back through the curtain into the bar area where we stopped for a few moments and chatted about the North. As usual, he listened intently. His ability to soak up knowledge on a myriad of complex issues is perhaps his greatest political talent. I knew this was the last time I would see him as president and I thanked him for all he had done to bring peace to my country, the first president who ever cared enough about it. As we walked to the door he suddenly put his arm on my shoulders, looked me in the eye and said, ‘We did some great work together, didn’t we?’ I couldn’t think of a better tribute than that to my time in America. I had come a long way too.

Chapter 5

My Father’s Dream

We walked along the road to the beach. He gripped my hand in that urgent way reserved for fathers walking with their sons, not as comfortable or steady as my mother’s. He was at home here. It was his place: West Kerry with its soaring mountains and mutinous sea crashing endlessly against the rugged shoreline. His family had been here for several generations and his nephew still farmed the lumpy land just a few miles from the beach. He knew every field, every yard of the old homestead. He even knew the ghosts. He told me he thought they walked beside him, those solemn spectres of family past. I know he talked to them in Irish, the native language still spoken in this remote part of Ireland. He missed them all, he told me, and more than ever now that he was bringing their grandchildren down to this most westerly part of Ireland.

Years later I would go back and find out who he was communing with.

* * *

When the 1911 Irish census first came on line it covered only four counties: Antrim, Dublin, Down and Kerry. Luckily, the O’Dowd old homestead in the townland of Kilcooley, about seven miles from Dingle, was included. My brother Fergus called me excitedly from Ireland and referred me to the Kilcooley parish records from 1911 – and there, at last, was my father’s family.

It was an extraordinary moment to reach out and touch the souls who came before me and made me what I am today. Some names I knew, others I never would. They were there under the heading: ‘Residents of House No. 8, Kilcooley, Kerry’. My great-grandfather, Edward Dowd (they didn’t use the ‘O’ back then) was the family patriarch in 1911. He was seventy-two years old and married with four children.

He signed his census form with an X, which meant he was not literate, a fact the census taker duly noted. He had been born just a few years before the famine in 1839 and had gone through it. Edward was a farmer, and he and wife Mary, 69, had married in 1861 and raised four kids there in their two-room house and small farm. Now, in 1911, they shared the two-room house with thirteen others – an incredible number of people, but a fair indication of the awful economic times.

There was Michael, my grandfather, and his wife, Catherine Kennedy, from a nearby townland. They were aged 45 and 38 respectively when the census was taken on the night of 2 April 1911. I remember my grandmother dimly, my grandfather not at all. They had nine children at that point and the census taker noted that ten had been born but one did not survive – something none of my family today ever knew. There was Mary who went to Detroit, Jack who followed her there, Michael, who would eventually inherit the farm, Ellen, who became a nun in Savannah, Georgia, then Patrick, who became a priest in the black hills of South Dakota; there too was Donal, my father, five years old on 2 April 1911, who later became a schoolteacher.

Underneath his name were those of Edward, who went to London, and Thomas who became a Christian Brother. Not yet born were Dennis, who also became a Christian Brother, Brid who came to New York, and Matt who became a Christian Brother and died tragically young. Also living in the house at the time were two of my grandfather’s brothers.

Everyone was listed as farmer or scholar, except for my grandfather’s brother, who was listed as a fisherman. Everyone except Edward was literate, but only in the Irish language. It seemed from the census that there were more people living in my great- grandfather’s house than in any other home in the parish. A family called the O’Connors had a six-room house, which must have made them the envy of the Dowds and everyone else locally.

What amazed me too was the fact that, almost a hundred years later, the same families still occupy the village. Next door, as they were in 1911, are the Hurleys and the Sheas. The old homestead is now farmed by my cousin Padraig. We know from Griffiths’ Valuations, an 1852 survey of land prices in West Kerry, that Michael and Mary Dowd were living in Kilcooley back then, though there is no further information on them. There is a wonderful timelessness to all this, the sense that the rhythms of life in an isolated part of rural Ireland pass down from generation to generation. I felt that a chapter on a previous life of my father’s family had suddenly been opened up and the history suddenly come to life.

That was all in the future, of course. On this day when I was young, my father and I reached the beach and walked to the end of the pier. We gazed out at the vast expanse of water and the headland in the distance. The clouds were settling in over Mount Eagle, a harbinger of rain to come. A distant roll of thunder echoed across the bay. A storm was coming. Other children were there with their parents, shouting and laughing. A little boy ran past, pursued by his father as they raced to their car to beat the storm. I realised for the first time that mine was older than most of the fathers and that he would find it hard to run so fast. It didn’t bother me. He didn’t seem to mind the rain as it fell and the sky darkened. His eyes were fixed on the wide horizon, staring far out to sea, past the crashing waves. ‘What is out there, Dad?’ I asked him. He looked at me, smiling. ‘America,’ he said. ‘That’s the next parish.’ It was the first time I had ever heard of the place.

Chapter 6

California Here I Come

There’s a stretch of wilderness, like a no-man’s-land, between Wyoming and Salt Lake City, where what seems like thousands of miles of hard sand and rock undulate on either side of the highway. On a clear summer’s night in 1978, with a full moon reflecting eerily on the lunar-like landscape, it was like nothing I had ever seen. Inside the Greyhound bus speeding me across this vista I was conscious of a great stirring.

I was twenty-five years old and truly on my own for the first time. Behind me lay the East Coast and the city of Chicago, where I had spent the past six months. Ahead lay the Western shores, first Nevada and beyond that California – my final destination. There is a moment, as Solzhenitsyn has remarked, that your life leads up to and everything after leads away from forever. This was mine. Perhaps it had been the lights of Cheyenne reflecting in the rear view mirror of the bus and that lonely, indescribable feeling as I faced into the night and the unknown. Maybe it was the sheer enormity of the land we now travelled through that brought about the dawning realisation that nothing again would ever be the same. Nor would it be.

Back in Chicago, just two hours after I had left, a telegram arrived informing me of my father’s heart attack back home in Ireland. If I had stayed, or even been delayed by a day, I would have immediately rushed home to be with him. The attack was not fatal, but a later one soon after would kill him. If I had returned from Chicago I would have been there when he died from the second attack. I would have settled down in Ireland and become the schoolteacher he so desperately wanted me to be. I would have figured, fatalistically, that my life had taken that turn for a reason and would have just allowed myself to be carried along in the familiar flow of family, a decent job and lots of friends. It was not to be, because of a two-hour time lag.

Strangely, my father had said goodbye to me on the phone just the week before, calling me up out of the blue to chat about America, a land he had never seen but which lived vividly in his imagination. He had given me my love of it, filling my childish head full of tales of westerns and Zane Grey novels where the heroes always looked cool and clean. Cowboy films were one of his few relaxations away from his seven children, and he replayed many of the scenes to me from memory. I loved the old movies too; titles like The Man from Laramie and Shane were part of my boyhood mythology. Finally I was living the dream I had had since I was a kid, of travelling to the American West. Indeed, since I was a child all of America had taken a grip on my imagination. I loved Superman comics and the visits home by my uncle, a priest in South Dakota. I was enchanted when he talked about the endless plains and the vast prairies where one could drive for a full day and never meet anyone, and the crashing thunderstorms and bolt lightning that lit up the night sky like day.

The life I lived in Ireland, solidly middle class, one of seven children of my father, a schoolteacher from Kerry, and my mother, a housewife from Clare, seemed sadly unoriginal by comparison. Because he was quite deaf at that stage, communication was difficult with my father during our final phone call, but I told him what I could about how well I was doing, the thing each parent wants to hear, despite the reality of my circumstances. I would always be glad of that last awkward goodbye.

Now I would never see him again and the telegram would pursue me across the United States, arriving ten days later when I was settled in California. As he lay ill and on his final journey I was on the Greyhound bus contemplating a rebirth, a new life in a land where I knew no one, having cut all the ties to Chicago and home. I had never felt happier in my life. I knew nothing of his illness, intent on my American odyssey.

Years later, my mother told me that when he heard I planned to move to San Francisco from Chicago, he had studied maps of America from his hospital bed and plotted my course from Chicago to San Francisco with the excitement of a wagon train scout planning a new route. Perhaps he was with me on this trip, a ghostly presence out beyond the flatlands. Indeed, during a fitful sleep on the Greyhound bus I dreamt vividly of him that night. I even jotted down a note about it when I awoke. In the dream I pictured him as I saw him on one of the last occasions in the Franciscan Church in Drogheda, my home town, half way up the aisle, a short, stocky man with his black cap for once in his pocket. He was kneeling, as he always did, yet in his own world, too deaf to hear the prayers, too proud to admit it to anyone but his family. In the dream he was reading from his old Irish language missal, the one with the ornate symbols and exotic Irish phrases. He caressed it often, as though it was one of his children. The litany of the saints always sounded much more intriguing in the Irish language, the fine strong words tripping off his tongue; he had a beautiful lilt when he spoke the language. I would remember that dream forever. Ever after, on hearing the booming opening lines of his favourite prayer in English: ‘Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope’, it would take me back to that moment.

Sometimes he would meet his friend, Stephen Ryan, like him an Irish speaker, and they would drive in Ryan’s old Fiat to the seaside, usually to Mornington, a sleepy little village just four miles from town. There the Irish Sea washed in, far calmer than the bold Atlantic on the other side of the country, and the hungry seagulls perched on top of the ruins of an old abbey. Cars carrying courting couples parked near the water and waited for the onset of nightfall. From across the fields you could often hear the tolling of the Mornington church bell, its rich peal echoing over the strand. On clear days my father and Ryan could look across the bay and see Ireland’s Eye, the little island perched off the Irish coast, and further on the shimmering lights of North Dublin, the gateway to the big city. Sometimes they drove in that direction, but they never actually reached it. They were two country men, not really at home in the big cities. Ryan was a travelling salesman and had spent a lifetime traversing the highways and byways of Ireland and he knew every twist and turn. My father had travelled little, never learning to drive.

Once I was lucky enough to accompany them to Mornington. We drove out on a harsh night with rain spitting against the windows of the tiny car. I sat in the back, wedged behind the front seats. I was eleven or twelve at the time, fast coming into maturity. They spent the entire time talking about how scandalised they were at the appearance in Dublin of American film star and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield. A sex symbol in Ireland! I couldn’t wait to read about her and dreamt about seeing her in the flesh.

The sins of the flesh, of course, were non-existent in Ireland at the time, or so we were led to believe. A generation later it would all come spilling out about paedophile priests, the horrific abuse in some orphanages and the dreadful acts committed on some single mothers who were forced to give up their children and live in total servitude. Back in the Ireland of the 1960s, grim, brooding and bitter, you didn’t try and stand up or stand out, you just conformed, even as a kid. You knew better than to question your elders and betters. A fundamentalist mindset reigned. ‘Who made the world?’ ‘God made the world.’ No room for doubt there.

That all seemed far behind me now. Now I was in Jayne Mansfield’s country: rich, voluptuous, different. The bus sped on. From time to time we pulled off the highway into some unnamed or unremembered town, stopped briefly to discharge or take on a passenger. The night sky was star spangled all the way to the horizon, the moon was full and the only sound apart from the hum of the bus was a soughing wind when you opened the windows to breathe in the perfect air. From the back of the bus wafted the acrid smell of a marijuana joint, and later some muffled giggling. Two black guys I had befriended at the Cheyenne stop were doing the smoking. When I invited them into the bar near the bus stop they politely declined. Once inside I knew why. Everyone there was white and they would hardly have been welcome.

Inside the bar I got into conversation with two cowboys seated at the counter. One told me he thought Ireland was somewhere off Africa. The other inquired, for some reason, about exporting cars to Ireland. I found it all exotic and exciting. Back on the bus after hours of crossing the flat terrain, Salt Lake City finally loomed in the distance, home of the Mormons, and not much else that I knew about it. As we traversed the downtown streets it seemed like a ghost town, with no one except occasional cops and a bum or two in sight. The Greyhound bus terminal was in a seedy part of town, as they invariably are, and the brightly lit waiting room was the only oasis in what seemed a dark and unfriendly neighbourhood. This was my terminus too, the place where I would pick up another bus to California. Within an hour I would have to choose between a bus to San Francisco or Los Angeles, a decision that would alter the course of my life forever.