Opinion: Micheál Martin may need to channel ‘the Champ’ during visit to the Oval Office

In his later years, it was a source of great pride to Paddy Martin that two of his sons had occupied the office of lord mayor of Cork. 

History does not relate whether the Champ ever dreamed that one of those sons might one day bring him —in spirit at least — to the Oval Office in Washington DC.

In January, before he was elected Taoiseach for the second time, Micheál Martin told The Echo that before big political debates, he motivates himself by ing his father, Paddy ‘the Champ’ Martin, a gifted amateur boxer who represented Ireland 13 times.

“Two or three minutes before the debate starts, I’ll go into a corner and I try to visualise, I invoke his spirit, and say, ‘He had to go into the ring, he was on his own, once you go into the ring you’re on your own, there’s a whole lot of people watching, depending on you’,” Mr Martin said.

All being well — which is ittedly a major assumption these days — Mr Martin will next Wednesday visit the White House and present a bowl of shamrock to US president Donald J Trump.

During his first term as taoiseach, Mr Martin missed out twice on the shamrock presentation. 

First, in March of 2021, when the world was locked in the grip of the covid-19 pandemic, and covid played a hand the following year, too, when Mr Martin tested positive the night before his planned meeting with then-president Joe Biden.

The Corkman had to isolate across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, in Blair House, the president’s guesthouse.

In the Oval Office, the Taoiseach smiled from a television screen at Mr Biden, and between them sat a bowl of shamrock which had, presumably, been disinfected within an inch of its life. 

“Last year we met virtually across the Atlantic; this year we’re meeting virtually across the road. So we’re getting closer,” Mr Martin joked.

It being March 2022, the conversation turned to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a month earlier and Mr Biden praised Ireland’s response.

“I want to publicly compliment you for it. I think you’ve already brought in over 7,000 or so refugees from Ukraine, and you’re prepared to do more. So, thank you, thank you,” the US president said.

“It’s our duty,” the Taoiseach replied.

Never a man to let dead Irish poets lie, Mr Biden then cited WB Yeats’s poem Easter, 1916 in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, specifically the line: “All changed, changed utterly”.

Trump and Zelensky meeting 

Three years on, when the Oval Office has been the scene of the public humiliation of Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelensky by Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance, you’d be inclined to say that poor old Joe and Willie Yeats didn’t know how good they had it.

All changed, changed utterly, indeed, but although what happened in the White House two Fridays ago was a terrible thing, there was little beauty to it.

It’s been quite something to see Donald Trump, who seemingly never met an actual dictator he didn’t love, denounce as a dictator the democratically elected leader of Ukraine for the lack of elections since Putin’s full-scale invasion, barely four years after Trump himself tried to overthrow a democratic election.

There’s history there, of course, going back to the first Trump impeachment, in 2019, when he was accused of withholding military aid to Ukraine to bully Mr Zelensky into pursuing investigations against Joe and his son Hunter Biden.

Even so, it was horrible — “quite extraordinary, very, very unsettling”, as the Taoiseach put it — to watch as Mr Trump and Mr Vance tore into a visibly distressed Ukrainian president like Russian Mafia underbosses with something to prove.

It is probably highly unlikely that Micheál Martin’s visit to the White House on Wednesday will go so badly as Mr Zelensky’s did, but then, barely 50 days into the second, even more chaotic, Trump istration, who really knows anything?

Enda Kenny's visit 

It’s hard not to think back to March 2017, when Donald Trump had been barely two months into his first term. Enda Kenny dropped around with the bowl of shamrock, and at the Speaker’s lunch the then taoiseach threw some pretty serious shade at Trump’s brutal immigration policies.

Reminding the president that St Patrick too had been an immigrant, Mr Kenny said: “Ireland came to America because, deprived of liberty, opportunity, safety and even food itself, we believed.

“Four decades before Lady Liberty lifted her lamp, we were the wretched refuse on the teeming shore. We believed in the shelter of America, in the comion of America, in the opportunity of America. We came and became Americans.”

It was a brave speech from Enda, even if Donald sat shoulders slumped throughout it, affecting that slightly gormless, closed-mouth grin he usually wears when he doesn’t seem to quite understand what’s going on but figures it’s not relevant to him.

Eight years later, though, the world is a very different place. This time around, an emboldened Trump knows where the levers of power are, and has surrounded himself with like-minded acolytes.

This White House is a much colder house for Ireland, with a certain resentment in MAGA (Make America Great Again) circles at this country’s perceived pro-Democrat bias, even as Irish America votes increasingly Republican. 

Some in power, such as the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, actively question our building our economic success off the back of so many US firms. And that’s not to mention the Apple tax decision.

Micheál Martin would doubtless point out that Ireland is the sixth-largest investor in the US, with Irish firms employing about 120,000 people there. 

That defence may not cut any ice, especially if we are identified as an EU weak link ahead of his threatened tariffs.

Then there’s our strong of Ukraine. That won’t have gone down well in MAGA-land. Neither will our recognition of the state of Palestine, and that’s before we even get to the Occupied Territories Bill.

Tech regulation could be an issue too, and don’t forget Elon Musk’s opposition to the Hate Crimes Bill last year, or his friendly online interactions with of Ireland’s far right.

And then there’s what es for the White House press corps these days. It could all be plain sailing for the Taoiseach until some conspiracy theorist with a blog blindsides him with something stupid that Trump nonetheless seizes upon.

It could get nasty. It might not, but there seems little chance Mr Martin won’t be preparing for the worst.

Last November, when he topped the poll on the first count in Cork South Central and it became clear that he would again be Taoiseach, Mr Martin must have imagined that, when it came to visiting the White House, third time might prove the charm.

Now, he might even be forgiven for sneakily wishing that his covid might come back.

When Mr Martin spoke earlier this year to this newspaper about his father’s influence on him, he quoted the Champ as saying: “If you’re not nervous or anxious before a big event, you’ll do badly”.

“And he always said that was how boxers got caught in the past, if you go in too cocky and confident, you’ll get the knock-out, you’ll get the sucker punch.

“But if you’re in nervous or anxious minset, your defences are up straight away. So I deploy that, I’ve always been conscious of that, never be cocky in any situation.

“I say, ‘Paddy, you had to get into the ring, I’m now going in, there’s nothing to fear, give it a go’.

It could get nasty. The Champ’s son will be hoping he’s ready for a scrap.