It’s been roughly a year and three months since Americans could look to the occupant of the White House and say, honestly and without hesitation: Our president isn’t perfect, but he’s a good and decent man.

Bostonians were reminded of just how far we’ve fallen in that respect when Joe Biden took the stage in the ballroom of the Intercontinental Hotel on Tuesday morning for the Irish American Partnership’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day breakfast. It was a surprise to the 500-plus people in attendance, including some of The Reporter’s staff who relayed the scene and Biden’s speech to inform this account. There was no inkling that the 82-year-old was even present at the breakfast until Claire Cronin, the former Brockton state representative who served as Biden’s US Ambassador to Ireland, stunned the room by saying: “As we celebrate today, we celebrate our Irish ancestry, the US-Ireland relationship, and the values that shape what it means to be Irish,” said Cronin. “And there is no one who embodies our shared values more than today’s special guest, President Joe Biden.” 

At once, the hushed room suddenly erupted into applause and cheers as they spotted Biden himself as he emerged stage left and carefully took the podium. 

Many American presidents can claim Irish ancestry, but with the possible exception of John F. Kennedy, none has a closer bond to the Republic of Ireland than the Pennsylvania-born Biden, whose grandparents were born in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. 

Biden was characteristically self-effacing, charming and witty. He sounded notes that were genuinely empathetic in a manner that’s refreshingly familiar, but so distressingly foreign to the present-day inhabitant in the Oval Office.

“The story of my family's journey, of all those who left, those who stayed, it's emblematic of the stories of my Irish American family and Irish American faith. It’s an immigrant story. Of course, immigrants today, their story is America's story. Families who are enduring fear and violence and separation at the hands of our government, that's not who we are. That's not who America is.”

It was classic Biden, who still exudes optimism and appealed to this admittedly friendly audience to defend their own.

“The Irish,” he reminded them, “are the only people who are nostalgic about the future. Because they have faith in a better tomorrow.. always looking for the next horizon, even in those difficult moments. We’re in a moment today when our democracy is in peril.”

This St. Patrick Day’s in Boston, the president said, “is made all more meaningful because it was 250 years ago to this day that British troops withdrew from the city of Boston.

“And for 250 years the story has been a constant … push and pull. Our ancestors, they knew America's not a fairy tale and we’re not guaranteed a fairy tale ending, but maybe it’s the Irish in me that’s caused me to believe that the America of our dreams is always closer than we think. Always.”

In a poignant closing, Biden spoke of unfinished plans for his own presidential library and hoped it would help to “pass down to the future generations the reverence for democracy that so many of us learned at our Irish kitchen tables.”

He summoned his mother’s guidance too: “My mom used to have a saying, Joey, as long as you're alive, you have an obligation to strive. And you're not dead ‘til you see the face of God.’”

He closed with a verse from Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney, who wrote: “Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then once in a lifetime, a long tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme.”

Biden added his own coda: “We can still make it rhyme. My prayer for all of you. All of us believed in our democracy. We knew it was worth fighting for. We did our part to make hope and history rhyme.”

-Bill Forry