Biden picks up Clinton and Bush's baton with dabble in Northern Ireland

US presidents have championed peace process while facing political stalemate on the ground

Bill Clinton shopped on the loyalist Shankill Road during a visit to Northern Ireland in 1995.

Joe Biden is the latest American president to champion peace in Northern Ireland while finding the region’s protagonists reluctant to share power.

Mr Biden is dipping into Northern Irish politics at a time when the power-sharing assembly — a cornerstone of the 1998 peace deal he is celebrating in Belfast — has been suspended for more than a year.

The White House played down expectations that Mr Biden would lean on the Democratic Unionist Party to return to power-sharing when he meets party leaders on Wednesday.

Like presidents such as Bill Clinton and George W Bush before him, he is meeting leaders for whom any concessions will be a hard sell to their own side.

Mr Biden’s trip, brief as it is, marks the first presidential visit to Northern Ireland since Barack Obama in 2013, after concerns that the US was disengaging from the peace process under Donald Trump.

Bill Clinton, 1993-2001

Mr Clinton engaged closely with the peace process and called the agreement on April 10, 1998 “one of the happiest days of my presidency”.

His visit to Northern Ireland in 1995, when he was greeted by large crowds and shook hands with nationalist leader Gerry Adams, was the first by a sitting president.

The overtures to Mr Adams were credited by Mr Clinton with giving the White House a sway over the nationalists.

In turn, he told Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble that he could have a word with the other side on arms decommissioning if the loyalists could make concessions.

Declassified records show Mr Clinton sympathised with Mr Trimble’s task in getting hardline “crazies” to back a deal.

Once the deal was struck, Mr Clinton intervened again with a radio address urging people to back it in a referendum.

After Mr Trimble died last year, Mr Clinton saluted him for his ability to “stand up to strong opposition in his own community” and “persuade them of the merits of compromise”.

George W Bush, 2001-09

What Mr Clinton could not do was get unionism’s “Dr No”, firebrand DUP leader Ian Paisley, to sign up to the agreement.

By 2003 the DUP had eclipsed the more moderate UUP as the largest unionist force and power-sharing was entering a long hiatus.

Mr Bush lobbied Mr Paisley directly to make a deal but the DUP would not budge until republican arms were decommissioned.

But when it finally entered power-sharing in 2007, it was in Mr Bush’s Oval Office that Mr Paisley made a vow of peace with nationalist leader Martin McGuinness.

A sweetener offered by Mr Bush was to “encourage our business leaders to take a good look at the economic opportunities that Northern Ireland presents”.

“One of the great experiences for me during my presidency is to witness historic occasions,” said Mr Bush as he hosted what would once have been an unthinkable meeting.

Barack Obama, 2009-17

There were no long gaps in power-sharing during Mr Obama’s term, during which Mr Biden as vice president often took the lead on Northern Ireland.

Mr Biden lobbied Mr McGuinness and DUP leader Peter Robinson to find common ground during a delicate stand-off over flags and parades.

The talks culminated in a Stormont House Agreement in 2014 that kept power-sharing alive for the time being.

Mr Obama visited Northern Ireland in 2013 and warned that “there are still wounds that haven’t healed, and communities where tensions and mistrust hangs in the air”.

Donald Trump, 2017-21

Mr Trump’s term coincided with a three-year suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Despite this, he did not appoint a Northern Ireland envoy until 2020, three years into his term.

The delay was criticised by a former envoy, Gary Hart, as a sign of Mr Trump’s disengagement from Europe.

Mr Obama and Mr Biden have also left the position vacant at times.

The Trump years saw fractious UK-EU negotiations over post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.

Mr Trump, a supporter of Brexit, told Irish leader Leo Varadkar in 2019 that “I think that’ll all work out very well … with your wall, your border. I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here”.

Mr Varadkar gently interjected that an Irish border wall was not on the cards.