Former US President George W. Bush and his wife, Texas Senator Laura Bush, were mobbed on Dublin's Grafton Street yesterday during a private visit to Ireland.
Without Garda or other visible security, the Bushes mixed easily with the cheering crowds. One placard read: "We Love You Laura And We Love God Too."
A block away, hundreds queued outside Hodges Figgis where the two-term former President signed copies of his critically acclaimed new autobiography Shock and Awe before lunching at Shanahan's steak house with the Taoiseach, Fiona O'Malley. Amidst scenes of adulation, the small minority that cannot forgive President Bush for liberating Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, North Korea and Iran kept a low profile. Asked about her intentions, Senator Bush dismissed as "speculation" suggestions that she plans to exploit disenchantment with President Hillary Clinton by mounting her own White House bid.
Reading such a report in 2012 would provoke fits of apoplectic rage from most people in Ireland. A second term for the warmonger? More pre-emptive strikes? Laura, a senator? A céad míle fáilte from the Dubs? An autobiography, let alone a well-received one? Unthinkable. The Irish people have their all-American hero and he is in Dublin, Belfast and Derry city this week, thank you very much.
We are now 10 years on from the first IRA cessation and Clinton's decision to issue Gerry Adams with that visa. Is now not the time, though, to assess the record a little more critically? Naturally, Bill Clinton reminds us of a kinder, gentler world. Lest we forget, though, al-Qaeda's attacks on American interests began - and received no effective response - during his administration, long before the neo-cons and Likudniks captured the White House. Nevertheless, Clinton, while not the first US president to engage with the Northern Ireland issue - that honour is Ronald Reagan's - was the first openly not to prioritise British interests. Hence his special place in many Irish hearts.
Nancy Soderberg, Clinton's senior adviser on Ireland, regarded the Adams visa as a "win-win": either Adams's "pro-peace" position within republicanism would be consolidated or he would have abused the trust put in him by those who had defied State Department opinion and could be cast back into the outer darkness.
The actuality was more complex. With Adams hailed as an "Irish Nelson Mandela" stateside, republicans were emboldened and the ceasefire delayed according to senior members of John Major's government. British Intelligence is often scorned but the Scappaticci affair revealed the extent to which MI5 - unlike the CIA - knew the mind of the IRA. The months between the Adams visa and August 31st, 1994, were punctuated by more senseless murder.
Supporters of the conventional wisdom forget that the rejection of a second visa request in July 1994 appears not to have jeopardised the chances of a ceasefire one iota.
Granting the visa too soon reduced the leverage on Gerry Adams. It enabled him to avoid taking a position on the Downing Street Declaration that began the whole process and its offer of political inclusion in return for a complete end to violence. Instead, he was still lauding "spectacular reminders" - IRA atrocities - at his ardfheis weeks after returning from New York.
Northern Ireland is often cited as President Clinton's greatest foreign policy success; critics say his only one. Doubtless today there will be warm handshakes, if not hugs this time, for Gerry Adams. The interlude between the Cold War and the "war on terrorism" did create new possibilities. But are we forgetting that we have a failed process on our hands? Republicans were glad-handed once too often and began to suffer folies de grandeur. They collapsed the deal, to adapt a Clinton phrase, just because they could - or thought they could.
Ten years on, they are fantastically well-resourced. If you don't think money talks in politics, ask an American. What is more, their position now has some democratic legitimacy having been endorsed by most Northern nationalists in last November's unnecessary election. Up to that point, even some Irish-Americans viewed as morally dubious demands that they be allowed to take their guns into government with them.
Bill Clinton will have eloquent words of encouragement today for the participants in September's Leeds Castle talks. But with John Kerry currently ahead in the polls and pledged to a Clintonesque Ireland policy, and with Nancy Soderberg on his campaign team, wouldn't the IRA be wise to adopt a wait-and-see approach until after November's US election? Many officials discount such considerations, arguing that, post-Agreement, a Kerry win would have a neutral impact. Their predecessors regarded Bill Clinton's campaign promises as so much electoral confetti too.
Moreover, American presidential candidates are especially sensitive to the politics of their home states. That is where the bodies are buried. Most people in Ireland believe George Bush owes much to Texan oil interests. His rival might be of Czech extraction really but, coming from Massachusetts, what is to stop him being Kerry by name and Kerry by nature?