Joe Biden’s Irish Soul

Rarely has there been such an Irish president in the United States Joe Biden. Ireland literally runs through his veins, and the heritage of his ancestors defines his identity: from the passion with which he addresses the working class to the tragedy that engulfed his life.

Biden, of Irish ancestry on mother’s sidea, he was born and spent the first years of his life in Scranton (Pennsylvania), one of the bastions of Irish Catholics in the United States and where he grew up surrounded by his mother’s family. The ancestors of Biden’s mother were 100% Irish: the Finnegans from County Louth (northeast Ireland) and the Blewitts from County Mayo (northwest), included in her visit.

His Irish ancestry has always been a source of pride. As he mentioned in various speeches, his maternal grandfather used to tell him, “Joey, remember, the best blood in you is Irish.” In the collective imagination, the president is so identified with Irish-Americans that, according to gossip, his 2008 vice-presidential rival, Republican Sarah Palin, kept calling him “Senator O’Biden.”

Its origins extend to the code name the Secret Service uses for him: “Celtic” (Celtic, in Spanish).

In an interview for a magazine Irish America In 1987, while still a senator, Biden was even asked if he hated anything about the character of Irish-Americans. He responded by giving the example of vigils where there is a corpse in one room and a family drinking in the other.

“If you think about it, it’s a bit brutal. Being Irish is a direct confrontation between life and death. There is something about the Irish that teaches us that to live is to suffer, but even so we are not afraid to live,” he reflected at the time.

And that is that Biden experienced suffering firsthand: he lost his first wife, Neilia, and his one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car accident shortly after he was elected senator; and in 2015 her son Beau dies of cancer.

At the beginning of his political career, this tragedy drew comparisons with the Kennedys. Actually, in his memoirs Promises to keep (2007), Biden remembers how in his early days in the Senate the press treated him like the “poor cousin” of former President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) because he was Catholic, young and of Irish origin.

Although he feels deeply about his roots, Biden has also used his image as an Irish Catholic for political gain, said Timothy Meagher, professor emeritus at the Catholic University of the United States and an expert on Irish-American history. cross.

At the beginning of his career, his identification with the Kennedy myth helped him. And, subsequently, being Irish-Catholic served to show the American working class that he was one of them, not part of that elite of white, British, Protestant politicians who traditionally dominated the circles of power.

Another important feature of his identity is related to his vision of politics as a profession where you have to win elections to survive, an idea that comes from the Irish who came to the US in the 19th century and saw politics as a way to make a living.

“It makes this type of politician less ideological and able to see what people think about certain issues,” says Meagher.

Outside of politics, Biden’s Irish character permeates everything, including his temperament and humor. For example, when a journalist asked him for a “short comment” for the British BBC three years ago, he answered with a smile: “BBC? I’m Irish”.

In addition, he is a lover of Irish history and literature. His hero is Wolfe Tone, who led an Irish nationalist uprising in the 18th century against British rule in Ireland, and his favorite poet is Seamus Heaney, whose lines he recited in front of a mirror to overcome his stammer.

He was so fascinated by Ireland that in 2016, accompanied by his grandchildren, he traveled to the island to visit the places where his ancestors lived.

In a letter he wrote before the trip, Biden quoted one of Irish writer James Joyce’s most famous lines: “When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart,” paraphrasing it to mean that when he dies, it will be on his heart always will be. will be the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

“But,” he declared, “Ireland shall be what shall be written upon my soul.”