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been, largely because he was not comfortable with arousing such emotions in his audience. As he spoke, he feared, as he told Ormsby-Gore later, that “if he had said, ‘And at this moment I call upon you all to cross into East Germany and pull down that wall,’ they’d all have gone, [that] the German people as such at this moment in history were not totally to be relied upon, and that this rather sheeplike instinct of theirs could be very frightening under certain circumstances and under the wrong leader still.” Kennedy feared not only the German masses but mass man anywhere, and where demagogic politicians might lead him.

His visit to Germany was an immense triumph, and he flew from there to the Ireland of his ancestors, but within whose heritage he had never felt fully comfortable. This Irish visit, however, was one of the transcendent experiences of his entire life. “Are you glad you came?” his Irish friend Dorothy Tubridy asked him when he was leaving. In private conversation he was not a man of flattering, meaningless pleasantries, and yet he told her, “These were the three happiest days I’ve ever spent in my life.”

There are few things worse than an economy in which a man must leave home so that his family may eat, and there was hardly anyone standing cheering along the Dublin streets who did not have a brother, a father, or a grandfather who had made that journey to America, Canada, or Australia in search of what some called a future. Kennedy, the greatest of all the scions of Ireland whose ancestors had gone abroad, was returning as the leader of the most powerful country in the world. And was it not fitting that he should return now, in this year of 1963, the first time more Irish were returning to Erin’s shores than were heading abroad?

One of those who accompanied Kennedy on his journey was the Irish ambassador to the United States, Thomas Kiernan. Before this visit Ambassador Kiernan had considered Kennedy “more British than Irish,” a president whose “first reaction would be, if there were any even minor dispute between Britain and Ireland, to side with Britain.” Kennedy had the quick wit, the verbal agility, and the protective self-deprecation of an Irishman, but when the diplomat discussed the partition of Ireland with the president, the cold, logical, British-hued mind took hold.

Kiernan had seen in America that anyone could become an ersatz Irishman, wearing the green on St. Patrick’s Day, drinking toasts to a heritage they neither knew nor understood. It was not all songs and shillelaghs, however, to those who were truly Irish-Americans. A hard bitterness was mixed with that heritage, and it struck Kiernan how often Kennedy mentioned the notorious signs that the Brahmins posted in Boston: “No Irish need apply.”

As the helicopter flew from Dublin to Galway, Ireland appeared to be a blessed, magical, verdant land far removed from the secret squalor and the ceaseless conflicts. As they soared above the land, Kennedy kept asking about the prices of houses and land. The ambassador sensed that the president was thinking about buying his own place here, a house where he would come occasionally and send his children to learn about their Irish heritage.

The president returned to New Ross and the Kennedy family homestead. As the helicopter headed to County Wexford, Malcolm Kilduff, the deputy press secretary, briefed the president. Kilduff told Kennedy about his experience working with Andrew Minahan, the chairman of the New Ross county council, in advancing the trip. Kilduff had involved the enormous, redheaded chairman in a myriad of details. The press aide told Minahan that the presidential limousine would pull in near the wharf. From there, Kennedy would be able to move easily up to the temporary speaker’s platform. The problem was the massive heap of cow dung waiting to be placed on barges. “You’ll have to move it,” Kilduff told the county chairman. “Christ, no,” Minahan said exasperatedly. “I’m going to pile it high and make that f’er think he’s crossing the Alps.”

When Kennedy’s helicopter set down in