A Wall Street Journal column has the Irish running the White House.
Professor Stephen Sestanovich, a professor at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes in a 'Washington Wire' column that new chairman of the Joint Chiefs in Staff, Joe Dunford, continues the amazing array of leading Irish Americans who fill the key posts around “President O’Bama,” as his headline proclaims.
Dunford, who traces his roots to Waterford, is the third Irish American Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman in a row after Michael Mullen and Martin Dempsey.
Retired Marine General James Mattis also noticed the ethnic link in a separate article in the Wall Street Journal.
“We have got one Irishman replacing another Irishman,” he said. “Both of them are comfortable in their own skin.”
Professor Sestanovich states, “it’s the Irish who have almost all the top jobs,” especially when it comes to the key decision-makers on foreign policy.
Sestanovic further notes, “Mr. Obama’s senior national-security team has included Tom Donilon as national security adviser, John Brennan at the Central intelligence Agency, Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, Gen. Martin Dempsey as (former) Joint Chiefs chairman, and Denis McDonough as White House chief of staff.
“Plus, don’t forget Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry—an honorary Irish-American because of his last name, Catholic upbringing, and his Massachusetts political base as a senator. “
He continues to mention U.N. ambassador Samantha Power who was actually born in Ireland!
“With “Fighting Joe” Dunford taking Marty Dempsey’s place,” he comments, “the nation’s highest-ranking military officer remains of Irish descent.”
Add into this mix the new top media and domestic-policy advisor Shailagh Murray and you have some sense of the Irish mafia running Washington these days.
Sestanovich, however, doesn’t believe that there is any kind of agenda amongst the Irish contingent. “There is, as far as I can tell, no obvious Irish policy agenda,” he writes. “(Imagine, by contrast, the questions that would be raised if all these positions were held by, say, American Jews or Poles or Asians.)... they know these organizations from the inside out—without quite being organization men. They’re tough, effective competitors, sometimes with a strong independent streak. But they’re members of a team they don’t—and clearly can’t expect to—captain.”
Sestanovic believes that “Obama has picked players with backgrounds very different from his own—and conspicuously similar to each other.”
Do you believe in Obama's "Irish mafia"? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
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