Bill Clinton


According to reports in the U.S. press, former United States president Bill Clinton could be taking up residence in the Phoenix Park, as Ambassador to Ireland as soon as next year, when incumbent Dan Rooney returns.

To which I say garbage.

There’s a better chance Lindsay Lohan would become envoy.

Reports suggest that Clinton, a regular visitor to Ireland, might be eying up the post.

The worst piece of blather was in the Chicago Sun -Times which noted:

“He and his exhausted wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, could still work on their Clinton Global Initiative and have a tranquil place for Hillary to wind down after leaving office before gearing up for her run for the presidency in 2016, and he has a grateful President Obama who would do almost anything for him.”

Utterly untrue Clinton could not keep up his Clinton Global Initiative if he became Ambassador to Ireland, It would be an immediate conflict of interest.

Clinton is booked through the end of 2013 with his Global Initiative which he sees as his passport to his most coveted goal -- a Nobel Peace Prize.

The diplomatic backwater of Ireland holds no such charms as a result.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of it.

Hillary Clinton, currently the US Secretary for State, will visit Ireland next week. She will travel to Belfast to discuss the peace process and investment opportunities. She will also attend a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and deliver a speech on US achievements in support of human rights in Dublin.

The Clintons visited Ireland three times during Bill Clinton’s time as President of the United States, from 1993 to 2001. The most memorable was when he turned on the Christmas lights in Belfast one year after the IRA ceasefire.

In 1999 Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address to a women’s conference and in 1997 she gave the Tip O'Neill Memorial lecture at the University of Ulster's Magee campus in County Derry. She has also addressed the Northern Ireland Assembly.