THE US branch office reopened for business yesterday. Enda Kenny performed the honours - one happy man. It was a helluva launch party, and the main feature - when Enda met Obama - doesn't even happen until today.
Ireland Inc is under different management now - the previous crowd run out of town by angry customers. The new boss, in an uncharacteristic burst of extravagance, flew to Washington on the company jet to mark the occasion. (Or "the jit" as the Government's Gulfstream shall henceforth be known in deference to a Taoiseach and Tánaiste from west of the Shannon.) It seems like an age since the eve of his general election victory, when Enda sat in his old classroom in a Mayo schoolhouse and contemplated the future. "Not bad for a lad from Cornanool," he mused.
A week to the day since he became Taoiseach and Enda Kenny is in his element in Washington DC, rubbing shoulders with senators and Congress members and wading his way through throngs of admiring Irish Americans who just have to meet him and tell him he's so wonderful.
And Inda, only a few hours off the jit, is playing them like a pro. Ambling along with the security teams trailing him, like he is born to it. (The Irish Times moved to talk to Inda in a hotel foyer, only to be deflected by a short but very large man with no neck and an earpiece: "Step aside, ma'am!" The cheek of him.) Not a bother on the rookie Taoiseach. Some ingénue. But then, he's had a lot of time to think and plan for this thrilling eventuality.
"I might be the newest prime minister around, but I've been father of the Dáil for some time. I know the way the mechanics of politics work," he told his audience at a business leaders' lunch in a fancy hotel.
He has lots of meetings to attend. Many speeches to deliver. Some hark back to the one he made in Leinster House on the day he assumed office - there's a little bit of recycling going on.
"I believe that the tomorrow imprinted on our ancestral retina is our today," he told guests at the American Ireland Fund's gala dinner last night. He said the same in the Dáil last week. We're still baffled. Ditto across the pond.
This is very much a sales drive from Kenny. He returned, over and over, to the theme that Ireland's economy is fighting back and that its new Government will "deal with the challenge of the banks" and has no intention, come hell or high water, of conceding any ground to Europe on the issue of corporation tax.
Ireland is open for business, "again"; and the Irish gateway through which America can do business with Europe is open, "again". That repeated use of the word "again" is interesting. Like he is putting the last few Cowen/Ahern years into a file marked "closed" and moving on.
Then there were the appeals to bring us their huddled, moneyed masses. "Come to us for your conventions, to build your businesses, your customers, to play golf, to trace your ancestors."
There is never going to be a better time to invest in Ireland, he explains.
The lunchtime crowd appears impressed. "The Americans aren't into recrimination. They don't want to hear the negative side of the story, they want to know about solutions and moving on. He's trying to do that," said one Dublin-based businessman who sells primarily to the US market.
Enda notes the presence of so many successful and enterprising people and declares: "I wanna go around and shake your hands before I leave." He goes down a bomb, with added cheese and Celtic twilight. He could have burst into a few bars of Tooraloora and gotten away with it. In fairness to him, he ditched some of the more excruciating bits, including a St Patrick's Day valediction which went: "On Erin's green valley - and on every heart that carries it - may he indeed look down on his love." Still, today, after all, is St Patty's Day, as many call it over here.
Those 800 or so Irish Americans who attended last night's dinner take a keen interest in what happens back in the motherland and the tone of the Taoiseach's words and his vigorous approach spoke volumes to them. It seems spirits may have needed lifting on both sides of the Atlantic.
For most of the day, Enda's wife did her own thing, but she was by his side for the glamfest of the gala dinner. It pains us to say this, especially after the furore over poor Joan Burton's snub on the economic portfolio front, but the most we could glean about Fionnuala's input into this historic occasion was that she chose Enda's green tie for today's meeting in the White House. She speaks several languages, we'll have you know.
During the day, there were interviews with PBS, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg TV, among other outlets. The Taoiseach hammered away at the economic message: stabilising banking; economic structure; corporate tax; paying our way in Europe; facing up to responsibilities.
He posed for photographs in front of his hotel, the Grand Hyatt, with the stars and stripes behind him and a copy of the Washington Post in hand, in case anybody thought he was still in Castlebar. The handlers were glowing, and it wasn't just the spin in the jit, or the "don't shoot me" badges supplied to them by the secret service to mark them out as part of the VIP team. Their man was doing alright.
"It's the vice-president for breakfast," said one of them, perhaps talking up Enda's negotiating abilities a little too much. Yesterday's speeches ranged from Caligula to Magellan and from Kilimanjaro to Croagh Patrick. Heaven knows what he'll say to Obama. But we suspect he'll be more than fine, going on yesterday's performances.
