Clinton assured us he believes in us. And there were pep talks too from Bono and Willie Walsh
NEVER MIND the cynicism beyond the Castle walls. There is serious work in progress.
The Saturday session begins at 8.45am and is due to end at 6.15pm – a long day for anyone up at 5.30 for the battle of Wellington. But in a piece of organisational brilliance that keeps 260 titans glued to the finish, the pixie dust is left till last. St Patrick’s Hall is due a massive shower of it at 4.30, in the form of President William Jefferson Clinton. But since it’s Bill, that should read “4.30”.
At 4.05, in the real world, he’s still on the 15th hole of Royal Dublin golf course. Recalculate: another three holes, chat chat, long goodbyes, chat chat, journey back to Shelbourne to change, chat chat chat. Then again, says a knowledgeable gent, he absolutely, definitely, definitively HAS to be out of the Castle by 6.30. Then again, he muses, there IS that parallel dimension known universally as “Clinton time”.
We wave goodbye to balmy, Saturday evening plans.
And because in the real world, ex-presidential schedules are rigid affairs – at least on paper – implemented by hatchet-faced secret service folk regardless of golf, chat or civilian sweat, everyone files into a steamy St Patrick’s Hall at the original, appointed time, for an extended sauna. Madly important people wriggle out of their jackets and dab their foreheads, bald domes glistening under the chandeliers.
At about 5pm, a dry tweet from Dara O Briain, captain of culture: “Sitting for an hour waiting at Dublin Castle. Who does this Bill Clinton guy think he is?”
Bono’s arrival on stage – upbeat, all in black topped with leather jacket – hardly raises the murmur level. But a little sexing-up is welcome to some in the press gallery (even clammier than the auditorium below) as we maintain our struggle to be positive. That’s until a foreign journalist taps meaningfully at a Guardian column about celebrity philanthropy: “Anti-Bono people will say: ‘If he cares so much, why doesn’t he pay his tax in Ireland? Why move his tax affairs to the Netherlands when tax in Ireland went up?’ ” There is that.
Also how to explain to her the omnipresence of Denis O’Brien around the forum? On the other hand, Gerry Adams seems awfully welcome among the titans and, according to a serious European journalist, is said to have been networking furiously and doing deals.
At 5.30, all rational thought flies out the fabulous windows and the roof takes off. The 42nd president of the US is coming up the aisle, a fine, steel-haired, three-piece-suited idol basking happily in an adoring, standing ovation.
Declan Kelly thanks his “dear friend Bill Clinton for being here with us once again to answer Ireland’s Call”. The song reference only makes us sad. Then the Taoiseach notes that he made the actual phone call to Bill “from this very room”. Why he was making calls from St Patrick’s Hall rather than his office is far from clear but the puzzle takes our minds off Wellington.
Bill begins by turning to the other rock star on stage: “Bono, thanks for wearing a jacket today.” Everyone cracks up because this is Bill’s gift, undimmed by the years: to captivate, to entrance, even while saying nothing. That folksy, relaxed yet sophisticated, tone, that comic timing, those stratospheric connections co-existing with all that inclusiveness (and never mind the secret service bots), the peace process, the Foundation, the drole mention of “a call from America’s secretary of state” [pause for laughter] – “in a voice, alas, I have heard all too often over the last 36 years. There was a stern reprimand coming. I could feel it.” Upon which every shiny-eyed, sweating titan in the hall just melts away in empathy.
“You know she has a travellin’ job and only gets home at the weekends? She said – ‘I hear you’re goin’ to be gone this weekend – where you goin?’
“I said the Taoiseach called and asked me to come to Ireland and talk at an economic conference.
“And she said – ‘oh well, GOOD!’ So I went from being a dunce to a hero . . .”
Heaves of audience laughter.
Then it’s time to take it down a notch. The voice drops : “In my family, second only to America, we love this country. And we believe in you.” He doesn’t quite say “get off your knees” but one of his great themes is that the world thinks a lot of more of us than we do ourselves.
He didn’t have to tell chirpy Bono. “I feel great,” says Bono, announcing that he’s just back from Bishop Tutu’s birthday in South Africa. Maybe you’re the exception, says moderator Fionnuala Sweeney, as Bill and Enda sit with their legs practically intertwined. Anyway, Bono is up for whatever Bill is up for. “I’m ready to work for this country. I’m ready to work for this Taoiseach . . . I would love to go on the road and tell people in India to take pres Clinton’s suggestion or wherever.”
He thinks music and art are part of the allure of the country for the likes of Google – and the competitive corporate tax rate “really helps”. Of course.
But he’s a tad “torn about the diaspora thing”, because “in the end”, he says, “things have to be great rather than just being Irish”. In their 20s, he says, U2 couldn’t wait to get away from the city wreckers and brown-bag merchants but he can’t imagine not living here now. What kept them here was people saying stuff like “they’re being very good to writers here, you should stay, certain breaks to people in the film business . . .these things are important . . .” Indeed they are.
Willie Walsh, another panellist, heaps high praise on the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Government via getting in a few good digs at previous administrations. “I find it somewhat ironic that I was invited to participate in this panel and then spent two days fielding questions about my interest in acquiring Aer Lingus. The last time I expressed an interest in it I had to leave the country.”
The audience loves it – but he’s not finished. “In terms of image, I think it’s absolutely critical that we have a Taoiseach that can stand up with confidence and portray a confidence . . . to look HAPPY in terms of the job that he’s doing, to give us a sense of hope that we cannot just come through this, but come through it very strongly.”
The last word goes to Eamon Gilmore in a rather touching speech about the history of Dublin Castle. “The very stones in the walls around us are part of the fabric of our country’s history . . . Let us ask ourselves, how will we be judged 50 years from now by a generation of historians not yet born?”
At 8 o’clock, as Bono streaks across the Upper Yard to his transport, Bill is still inside glad-handing his fans. When he finally surfaces amid his scarily hostile secret servicemen, he looks almost hollow. Can you give us a word, president Clinton ?
He thinks for a long moment. “That you can and will get out of it and it’s a good thing that you’ve got all these people talking about how do to it.”
Well, it had been a long day.
QUOTES FROM CLINTON’S SPEECH
I think right now, the world thinks more of Ireland than many Irish think of their own country
What we have to decide is whether it’s a future of shared benefits and shared responsibilities or a winner-take-all future
This is a small country that loves its past but there’s a difference in knowing it and feeling it . . . Start conducting a huge number of oral histories, starting with people over 80 . . . so they can tell the story of how Ireland emerged from abject poverty to the fastest growing economy in Europe . . . And publicise it widely because too many young people feel like a failure because they have never known collective failure.
The last big decision you’ve got is what are you gonna do about the mortgage deal. The quicker you flush that out, the quicker you’re going to generate small business and domestic demand and growth.
Everybody in the world thinks you’ve done an unbelievable job of managing a miserable situation – but that’s cold comfort for the people who haven’t enough money to buy a suit let alone make a mortgage payment and are worried they’ll never have a job . . . You have to go get those people because you need them too. All of them.”
The only real cloud hanging over you is you’re still pretty dependent on exports to Europe . . . You’re good at exporting . . . China is not the only rising economy . . . You can do a lot for the Indians . . . Brazil is the most environmentally responsible big rising country on earth . . .
American companies now have two trillion dollars in cash reserves . . . You ought to target the companies that you know are rolling in dough.
People like us, we’re sort of professional Irish-Americans. We’re never happier in America than when we go to some Irish event and we tell each other what good Irish people we are and how much we love it. It’s like when we don’t do it, we have DTs or something . . .
You think you have a lot of tourists, but you could get a lot more . . . Dublin before the crash was the 16th most expensive city in the world, it’s now 43rd. That may be a bummer for a lot of you but it’s a marketing tool that you ought to be able to use . . . You already paid the misery, you might as well get some of the advantage of it.
Don’t spend all your time trying to keep bad things from happening. Spend lots of time trying to make good things happen.