JFK in Ireland: Four Days that Changed a President. Ryan Tubridy

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       PROLOGUE

      Kenny O’Donnell, the President’s right–hand man was flabbergasted. “Ireland?” he said. “Mr. President, may I say something? There’s no reason for you to go to Ireland. It would be a waste of time. You’ve got all the Irish votes in this country that you’ll ever get. If you go to Ireland, people will say it’s just a pleasure trip.”

      Nobody thought it was a good idea. Not the American media, not the presidential advisers, nobody. But President Kennedy had made up his mind and when O’Donnell went back to the President the following day to relay this message, Kennedy looked up at him from his newspaper “with an air of exasperated impatience”. “Kenny, let me remind you of something,” he said with a distinct air of finality and authority. “I am the President of the United States, not you. When I say I want to go to Ireland, it means that I’m going to Ireland. Make the arrangements.”¹

      It was meant to be a band–aid trip to key European allies, an attempt to show them that America cared as the Soviet beast breathed down their necks. Italy demanded a visit, Germany needed attention, England desired a distraction and France sulked. But there were bigger problems at play; Italy was between governments and there was an ailing Pope in the Vatican. In Germany, Chancellor Adenauer’s government was in disarray after the Der Spiegel affair. In England, Harold Macmillan was suffering through the extraordinary Profumo Affair, which saw his War Minister caught lying about his affair with a call–girl who happened to be sharing a bed with Russian naval attaché Eugene Ivanov. The thought of America’s glamorous young president popping over for tea was political manna for the electorally beleagured СКАЧАТЬ