Can’t lead, can’t speak, but we’ve gone a long way

IT IS the room where the world trembled on the brink of annihilation as global crises were escalated and defused within its curved walls, but for the huge shadow it has cast over humanity this past century, the Oval Office is surprisingly intimate.

As the brilliant spring sunshine poured onto the president’s desk, the ghosts of FDR and JFK hung heavy in the air, as did the decisions they took in this small room to usher in the atomic age and bring the world to the brink of nuclear war over Cuba.

Despite Wall Street and the international banking system plunging into turmoil, the 43rd president was wrestling with the slightly less momentous task of how best to say goodbye to one of his most loyal international friends, Bertie Ahern.