Ryan’s may be hard Veep choice for Irish to accept

NO matter what drama, farce and pathos the world witnesses in the forthcoming US presidential election, what we know for sure is that the next vice-president will be an Irish-American Catholic.

Needing to add a bit of conservative zing to his campaign, Mitt Romney has chosen Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate.

By all accounts Ryan is a likeable chap with a considerable brain in his head and, most importantly, is the kind of right-wing, Ayn Rand-loving type needed to calm any Republican fears that Romney may have secret lefty inclinations. Just as the addition of the pathologically dopey Sarah Palin to the ticket destroyed John McCain’s presidential bid, it’s hoped that Ryan will have the opposite effect.

But given the symmetry between the two Veep contenders, some US commentators are already talking about how Ryan and Biden represent different forms of Irish-Americanness: Biden’s story is of a blue-collar family struggling amidst hard-times while Ryan’s is more comfortable and middle-class, his family having made a few bob from the construction industry.

These differing backgrounds, so goes the logic, have informed their views on economics and the role of government. But the religious component to their backgrounds also seems to have wrought different results. Biden is pro-Right to Choose and pro-gay marriage; Ryan vehemently opposes them. Indeed, the two men are so different to each other on just about every issue that it starts to render the term ‘Irish-American’ almost meaningless. Perhaps they both love Riverdance.

It will be interesting to see, if Romney and Ryan succeed, whether this country will grasp Ryan to its bosom as one of our own done good.

Because it could be argued that, philosophically, Ryan isn’t really Irish-American at all. Yes, Ireland is still in some respects quite a conservative country and religion has played a mammoth part in our collective development.

Yet this has been because of a range of social and political reasons rather than a profound belief that God should be central to the running of our State.

In a recent speech, echoing the beliefs of the Republican right, Ryan said: ‘Our rights are not given to us from government, our rights are given to us naturally, by God.’ Once citizens claim that their rights are divinely-inspired rather than commonly agreed, then the role of government is emasculated. Government shouldn’t interfere to try to produce a more fair society because God doesn’t want it that way.

This is pretty much the direct opposite of the approach taken by most western European countries, this one included. Indeed, you don’t have to watch Fox News for very long to realise that the word ‘European’ is used as a synonym for ‘socialist hell-hole’. Yet Fox and the rest of the US media will go on about Ryan’s Irishness; even though Ireland is probably the last place he’d want to live in.