Yeah, well, they always say that.
Swaddled in the afterglow, the Irish are trying to figure out: Was it true love or merely a one-day stand?
Not even a whole night, after all, since Barry O’Bama ran off after the ecstatic lovefest, muttering some incredible excuse about a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland.
The tall, dark stranger who bewitched an island didn’t say when he’d be calling again to help out with Ireland’s $100 billion debt. The American president was back in the arms of the Special Relationship. He even proposed a deeper commitment with David Cameron, calling it the Essential Relationship. And on Thursday he’ll be whispering je t’aime to the French.
But the ordinarily laconic lad had looked really happy while he was here, hadn’t he?
As J.F.K. and Bill Clinton discovered before him, Irish love is all-encompassing, a mother’s milk for needy politicians.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny was so enamored of the president that he offered an odd homage, a near-carbon copy of the opening of Obama’s victory acceptance speech in Grant Park in Chicago in 2008, changing the word “America” to “Ireland” and “founders” to “ancestors”
Don’t Be A Stranger (Maureen Dowd, New York Times)