Clinton's green thumb.

One should not exaggerate the American contribution to the resolution of the Irish question. The heavy lifting is being done by the Irish and the English. But it remains true that at each turning of a very complicated path over the past year, President Bill Clinton has nudged the process of reconciliation along with subtle and appropriate external pressure. In February 1994, over the objections of Prime Minister John Major and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the president granted a visa to Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, when Adams was still viewed as a terrorist pariah by the British government. As the Irish Taoiseach, John Bruton, remarked at the Shamrock Ceremony in the White House this past March 17, "The willingness to take risks, to do things that many of us might have thought foolhardy at the time--like granting a visa to Gerry Adams--has been proven to be right. You made the right decision."

Why was Clinton's gesture right? Because it acknowledged that the crucial conversations between Adams and John Hume, leader of Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labor party, in the fall of 1993 represented a genuine breakthrough in twenty-five years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. To quote Bruton again, Clinton's initiative gave Sinn Fein "a glimpse of the political dividend that was there for them by pursuing a peaceful rather than a violent path." And not only was Adams given a platform to express his nationalist views in America without censorship or the filtering system of the British government, but more importantly, the leaders of the other four political parties in Northern Ireland (Hume, Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist party, James Molyneux of the Ulster Unionist party, and John Alderdice of the Alliance party) were all able for the first time to articulate their concerns about the future of their country in a common and neutral context. What was surprising in the conversations in New York last year was not the obvious differences among these leaders, but the areas of their convergence, beginning with Adams's unforgettable promise to "remove the gun permanently from Irish politics." From that breakthrough followed the IRA cease-fire on August 31 and the Loyalist cease-fire on October 13.

Clinton's next move was to invite Adams to the White House for a visit with Vice-President Al Gore and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. The president himself was careful to be busy in another wing of the White House at the time. He was equally adept at reaching out to all the leaders of the contending parties in Northern Ireland. In so doing the president sent another important signal to Dublin and London that there can be no comprehensive way out of the impasse in Northern Ireland without the collaboration of the divergent traditions and communities in that divided island.

Like most first-term presidents, Clinton wants to be re-elected. And he is smart enough to know that pols like Senators Christopher Dodd (D--Conn.), Edward Kennedy (D--Mass.), and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D--N.Y.), will provide far greater help in that effort than Prime Minister John Major, who fumed over Clinton's next moves: giving the green light to Gerry Adams to come to this country in March to raise money for Sinn Fein and inviting Adams to the White House for the Clintons' annual Saint Patrick's Day party. These gestures endeared the president to lots of the 44 million Irish-Americans who vote. But Clinton was calculating not his political fortunes as much as his historic role as a peacemaker. Against the advice of his attorney general, Janet Reno, the president took this latest initiative to reward Adams for his commitment to move forward the tricky process of decommissioning of weapons. In the presence of Bruton, Adams, and Hume at the party, Clinton quoted Finley Peter Dunne's famous definition of a fanatic as "someone who is sure that God would be on his side if only he knew all the facts," and he urged "all the parties concerned to put aside all extremism for the common good of peace." This echoed nicely the recurrent theme in the recent New Framework document on Northern Ireland to pursue agreement "by exclusively democratic, peaceful means, without resort to violence or coercion."

When Adams came to New York to raise funds for Sinn Fein last March, he assured prospective donors that all funds collected here will be dedicated exclusively to the democratic goal of enlarging the spectrum of opinion about the political process in Ireland. And he guaranteed that the books of his political organization will be subject to the careful scrutiny of an annual audit by a Big Six accounting firm. Those of us who can remember all the cash stashed away in Maurice Stans's safe in the office of the Secretary of Commerce and all the dirty tricks that were financed by the Committee to Re-Elect the President [Nixon] should be satisfied that Sinn Fein is in a much better position to assure American supporters that their contributions will never be spent on guns than the Republican party was able to promise its supporters in 1972 that their contributions would be spent in fair and honest electioneering.

Clinton's pressure on England and Ireland in these matters has been consistently appropriate. Not too little, avoiding the appearance of disinterest shown by his predecessors (including John Fitzgerald Kennedy), who left the Irish question to be resolved by the English, at least since the partition of Ireland. Nor too much, avoiding the appearance of unduly intervening in the troubles of old and dear friends. Clinton understands better than his predecessors that all the Irish must be involved in the resolution of the Irish question.

And the president understands that this question is actually a complicated set of questions involving economics as much as politics. That is what drove his decision to ask former Senator George Mitchell to continue his public service by supervising a major economic initiative in Ireland. This program is directly related to the prospect of a just and lasting peace that includes equality of opportunity for both traditions and communities in Northern Ireland. The man who once said, "It's the economy, stupid," is not oblivious to the widespread unemployment that plagues Ireland today, North and South. He is aware, moreover, that in the North, twice as many Catholics as Protestants are out of work. These are the tough issues that the president has called to be explored in a major White House conference this month. Thanks in no small part to his leadership, the harp may be taken up again to sing new songs of a brighter day for Ireland.