NOT long before John F. Kennedy's historic visit to Ireland in 1963, the Irish ambassador to the United States, T.J. Kiernan, raised the Northern Ireland issue with him at a private White House meeting. The President, according to the ambassador's report to Iveagh House, "looked as if another headache had struck him and asked me was he expected to say anything in public".
In the intervening years, almost nothing changed. Jimmy Carter's carelessness in allowing someone to stick a button on his lapel reading "England Get Out of Ireland" for the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York in 1976 was the exception that proved the rule: for even the most well meaning of American politicians, Ireland was a sticky mess, best avoided. Hokum and shamrockery were fine, but real politics were out.
The last four years have seen more change in this situation than the previous four decades, and Conor O'Clery's admirable book is an insider's story of why and how that change occurred. It is a chronicle of the sea change in Irish American relationships that occurred under the most unlikely of presidents, and of the concomitant changes in the special relationship between the United States and Britain - but it is far more than that. It is also a perceptive study of the grammar and modalities of political power, blessedly innocent of jargon and continually refreshed by an infectious sense of engagement and by the journalist's eye for significant detail.
It is a book which is to be devoured, rather than read, and when you put it down finally, with only a mild burp of cognitive dyspepsia, the after taste lingers satisfyingly on the palate, composed of all kinds of fascinating flavours.
One of them is the extraordinary quality of Clinton's political decision making. This is quite apart from the merits or demerits of the issues involved: what is intriguing is the sure footed, almost animal nature of his intuition, as he brushes advisers and bureaucrats aside, identifies what are for him the core issues, and makes up his mind. Critical to this process was his calculation that the damage to the special relationship with Britain was bearable in the light of the political bonus that was within reach.
Another is the role of Niall O'Dowd. O'Clery's cool analysis of his fellow journalist's broker age function is both a tribute to O'Dowd's persistence and political skills, and an intriguing foot note to, the concept of journalistic impartiality. It might have happened without O'Dowd, but not at the same speed. For a time, indeed, important initiatives involving the IRA - the brief and unannounced 1993 ceasefire, for instance - were known to the White House before they were known in London or even in Dublin. Albert Reynolds, still reading the newspapers, found out about it in The Irish Times.
Intrinsic to all of this also is the celebrated concept of deniability which first got an airing during the Reagan/Contra affair Here it involved establishing a sufficient number of intermediaries between the lobbyists (effectively, Sinn Fein) and the decision makers (effectively, Nancy Soderberg and Clinton himself) to ensure that nobody had to talk directly to anyone they weren't supposed to be talking to, but that the business would get done just as if they had been.
There is also the skilful depiction of the world of Irish American politics in and around the White House. The quite different predilections and roles of key players such as Tom Foley, Ray Flynn, Teddy Kennedy and Bill Flynn are sketched with enviable economy and in a way that illuminates the overall decision making process. Just because they all wore green didn't mean that they were necessarily playing on the same team. Orange gets a look in too: one sub theme of the book - the Unionist and Loyalist encounter with Irish America - is handled with sensitivity and insight.
Conor O'Clery has, in this book, done what most journalists long to do but rarely get the time or opportunity for: he has established the necessary and vital connections between the events and the personalities he had to report in the newspaper, often at breakneck speed, at a time when the pressure of events and of journalistic conventions made it impossible for him to give his readers the context and depth of what was happening beneath the surface.
The book also points a moral for the future. Politics, in the long run, is not about flag waving or even elections, but about delivery. People who have power can deliver, but they expect what O'Clery tellingly describes as a "bounce" in return: political relationships are always symbiotic.
The complex triangle between Clinton, Dublin and the Northern Ireland players helped to deliver the ceasefires. But Clinton will not be so keen to get involved again, even with four more years ahead of him, without stronger assurances than are currently on the table. Gerry Adams is now, to all intents and purposes, back to the pre ceasefire position insofar as Irish America and Clinton are involved. He cannot go on blaming the British for ever. He is going to have to deliver again. And Clinton, for his part, would be wise to put a band aid on the special relationship in the process.
A couple of quibbles. "Speirbhean" (not Speir Bhan) is the poetic word for a woman seen in a vision, rather than "woman of mythology" or "strong woman".
And I cannot really believe that a Loyalist politician used the term "sons of bitches", even about his Unionist contemporaries; it must have been a piece of cultural translation by the American who was telling the story.
Above all, what is Conor O'Clery doing in Beijing when he has established such an enviable record inside the Beltway? The Americans have a saying: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Without being privy to the reasons for his transfer, and for The Irish Times's decision to open a bureau in China, I must say that it leaves me scratching my head. Still, he has left us the book.