Barack can keep on gushing, but Enda’s in bad need of a lie down

HE didn’t part the Red Sea, but Barack Obama did transform Dublin’s Dame St into a human river of hope — and for a nation so tired of being on its knees that was miracle enough.

While the song may be wrong when it claims there is no one as Irish as Obama, there is certainly no one as stylish at telling the Irish what they long to hear.

Speaking to multiple transatlantic audiences at once, Mr Obama skillfully used his distant Offaly ancestor’s story of survival to both seduce the Dublin crowd and also anchor himself deep within the American psyche of immigrant achievement and legitimacy back home — important in a country where more than one fifth of voters believed he was lying about his origins until the release of his birth certificate last month.