LONDON — It seemed like barely a drop-by, a quick stopover in Northern Ireland by President Biden before he made a pivot south for a roots tour in his beloved Irish Republic. He stayed in Belfast just 18 hours. He was attacked by some unionist officials and some conservative columnists. He gave a modest speech and then he was gone. O
Biden was in Belfast in part to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the pact that helped end years of bloodshed between largely Protestant unionists allied with the United Kingdom and largely Catholic nationalists whose eventual goal was to join the Republic of Ireland. The decades-long conflict was known as the Troubles.
But there was another mission, forward-looking, not backward-, one designed to help restore a functioning government in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. For Biden, that meant a mission to do no harm, and by that measure, his British hosts were gratified by how it all went.
The optics of his time in Belfast were not always ideal. The crowds that turned out were modest in comparison with some previous U.S. presidential visits to Northern Ireland in the past 25 years. His speech lacked rhetorical flourish. The White House appeared to downgrade to a coffee what the British had said was to be a bilateral, or bilat, with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Reporters cheekily dubbed the short meeting a “bi-latte.” British officials said the meeting was swell nevertheless.
Biden then traveled south to Ireland, his ancestral homeland. Arriving at his first stop, he was unstrained about how happy he was to be there, saying, “It feels like home.”
ne might ask: What was the point?Visiting the residence of the Irish president on Thursday, he said, “I’m not going home. I’m staying here, because this is an incredible place.” Northern Ireland seemed in his rearview mirror.
Biden has always worn his Irishness as a badge of pride, and those in the pro-unionist camp in Northern Ireland and their allies elsewhere in the United Kingdom took that as an opportunity to attack him. In Belfast, Amanda Sloat, a National Security Council official traveling with Biden, felt compelled to vouch for the president’s respect and affection for the United Kingdom after Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) claimed that the president “hates” the United Kingdom. Sloat told reporters: “I think the track record of the president shows he is not anti-British.”
Biden also made an unfortunate gaffe in Ireland that allowed for more ridicule from his critics in the United Kingdom. While talking about a relative who had been an Irish rugby player, he mixed up the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team with the Black and Tans, a brutal British military unit that fought against rebel forces in the Irish war for independence. So it goes with Biden.