The Last king of Ireland

 

Oscar Wilde still lounges, louche-like, on a boulder in Merrion Square. As always, the Liffey, a river crossed by bridges named for playwrights and patriots, lumbers its way to the sea. Grafton Street packed with moneyed pedestrians. But Irish ayes are missing.

The Gathering, as they call this year, is a campaign backed by the government and the tourism industry to induce the clamorous clans of Erin to pay a visit here. Given that half the world is Irish and the other half wants to be, in Bill Clinton’s phrase, it’s an easy sell.

Yet, what should be a year of discovery, a diaspora of 70 million summoned to the home of their not-so-distant ancestors, is clouded by a bittersweet anniversary. Fifty years ago the last king of Ireland, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, came to the land of his great-grandfather Patrick. A few months later, he was gone, shot by an assassin in Dallas.

 

To look back now, at a time when Ireland and the United States are staggered by doubt, is to realize how much has changed in the half-century since he was here -- change, in too many respects, for the worse.

Kennedy was mobbed. Over several days, he delighted a lyrical people with his wit and his one-liners. He charmed old ladies, nuns and schoolgirls. He lifted hearts by his very presence: here was the leader of the free world, the descendant of people who fled a famine that killed a million Irish. To see what time and good fortune had done to produce that youthful leader was to believe that anything was possible.

The crucifixes are gone from many homes, after an epic institutional failure of a church that protected pedophiles and abusers among its clerics. The belief in government as a force of good has been displaced as well. The ruling elite, aided and abetted by bankers, financiers and insurers, wrecked this economy, and then got out on the bailout express.

Everyone else paid a price -- in higher taxes, in across-the-board slashing of essential services, in real pain. The unemployment rate is still 15 percent, and nearly one in four mortgages are in arrears. Once again, the numbers are up regarding the greatest of all Irish exports -- people. Since 2008, more than 300,000 have left.