The Irish seemed to feel that way as well. Crowds formed in the pouring rain to see Biden. People waited in pubs for hours before he was to arrive. And streets were lined several deep, some chanting his name – often dropping any formalities and calling out, simply, “Joe!” — before he exited his armored vehicle that carried both American and Irish flags.
He professed to be unbothered by the rain: “It’s fine. It’s Ireland,” he said.
It was a homecoming of sorts for perhaps the most Irish in a long line of Irish American presidents. Biden came with his son and his sister. He lingered at stops to soak in the atmosphere. And he recounted the emotions of his ancestors.
“I don’t know why the hell my ancestors left here,” he said at McAteers The Food House, a local market and deli. “It’s beautiful.”
At a packed Windsor Bar and Restaurant, he reiterated the sentiment: “When you’re here, you wonder why anyone would want to leave.”
There have been many U.S. presidents with Irish ancestry — including Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, who came to Ireland in 2011 and raised a pint of Guinness — but there have been few, other than perhaps John F. Kennedy, whose Irishness is as closely tied to their identity.
Biden regularly quotes Irish poets; his major speeches often cite passages from Seamus Heaney, William Butler Yeats or James Joyce. He says it was those poets whose work he recited to overcome a stutter as a boy.
“My colleagues always kid me about quoting Irish poets all the time,” Biden once said. “They think I do it because I’m Irish. I do it because they’re the best poets.”
Either way, the Irish are grateful. In his remarks, Micheál Martin, Ireland’s foreign minister, thanked Biden for his repeated elevation of Irish verse.
“I know just personally in terms of how you’ve introduced many international meetings with a quote from Irish poets, and we appreciate that,” he said.
Even more often, Biden cites the sayings of his Irish mother. “My mother is an Irish Catholic woman with 6,000 expressions,” he has said, with perhaps a hint of hyperbole.
As a nondrinker, Biden was not in a position to raise a pint. But his first stop Wednesday was in County Louth, the ancestral homeland of the Finnegans. “I wish our mom, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, were here today,” Biden said. “She’d be so damn proud. You know, Louth held such a special place in her heart.”
Biden’s trip to the island was timed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the peace accord that ended decades of bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. But he stayed in Belfast for only a few hours before heading off to traverse the Republic of Ireland for two and a half days, perhaps reflecting the president’s priorities.
Even in Belfast, Biden veered off-script to hail his lineage.
“You know who designed the White House? An Irishman! No, not a joke,” Biden said during his first public remarks of his trip. “Your history is our history. And, more important, your future is our future.”
Later he talked about how he is a proud Irishman even though his last name and his middle name, Robinette, have British origins. “So I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Biden joked.
A few hours after landing in Northern Ireland, Air Force One departed to take Biden 105 miles south to Dublin.
“Remember, Joey, the best drop of blood in you is Irish,” Biden said, quoting a frequent reminder from his grandfather.
While he has visited Ireland before, Biden has left little doubt that his first trip here as president was a powerful moment for him personally, a symbol of how far his family has come even as it retains ties to the old country.
“I’m so proud to be here,” Biden said. “So proud to be in Louth.”
Biden, who has suffered great loss, with the deaths of two children and a wife, has connected his Irish background with feelings of longing and tragedy. “Everything between Ireland and the United States runs deep,” Biden said on St. Patrick’s Day in 2021, wearing a green tie and carrying a fistful of shamrocks in his coat pocket. “Our joys, our sorrows, our passion, our drive, our unrelenting optimism and hope.”
Ireland has often embraced him back. When Biden won the presidential election in 2020, Ireland’s RTE network closed its nightly broadcast with a clip of Biden reading from Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy.”
On Wednesday, the Carlingford Pipe Band, a bagpipe and drum ensemble, greeted Biden when he arrived in this coastal town, playing an original piece titled “A Biden Return.” In 2020, the group performed another original song, called “Our Local Joe,” for a local parade held in celebration of Biden, then the president-elect.
“I’ve often said the Irish are the only people in the world, in my view, who actually are nostalgic about the future,” Biden said. “Think about it. We’re nostalgic about the future. I think we all are, no matter where we live, if we have Irish blood in us, and it’s because more than anything, more than anything, in my experience, hope is what beats in the heart of all people, particularly in the heart of the Irish.”
First lady Jill Biden did not accompany her husband on the trip, but the president was joined by his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and his son, Hunter.
For Hunter Biden, who foreign business dealings while his father was vice president have embroiled him in controversy and turned him into a top target for congressional Republicans, the trip marked his highest-profile public engagement on the world stage since his father became president.
The younger Biden seemed to relish the Irish spotlight, far away from the legal troubles he faces at home. Smiling widely, he shook hands with the throngs of fans who came to catch a glimpse of his father, showing off the glad-handing and retail politicking skills that his father has perfected.
On Thursday, the president is scheduled to address the Irish Parliament in Dublin, meet with political leaders and attend a banquet. On Friday, the ancestral journey continues with a visit to County Mayo, the homeland of Biden’s Blewitt ancestors, where he is scheduled to deliver remarks about Irish Americans, describing their journey as not only a story of immigration but a reflection of the United States as a country of immigrants.
In the United States, Biden, who invokes connections across ethnicity and religion that sometimes strain credulity, regularly cites his Irish background to make a point about policy. He has linked his Irishness to his outlook on immigration, for example, noting that his ancestors boarded coffin ships in the Irish Sea to escape a famine in the 1840s.
“All of our ancestors, yours and mine, they came equipped with only one thing — the only thing they had in their pocket was hope,” he said in 2020.
The president has also cited his Irish heritage in his approach to policies he views as discriminatory.
“America has come a long way in addressing discrimination in the workplace since the days my ancestors faced ‘No Irish Need Apply’ signs,” he said in a 2008 speech calling for gender equity. “Yet discrimination today still exists.”
Biden has made repeated trips to Ireland, including a six-day tour as vice president that included a similar itinerary and even more family members. On Wednesday, he vowed this visit would not be his last.
“The bad news for you is we’ll be back,” Biden said. “There’s no way to keep us out.”
Pager reported from Dublin.
