Symbol Of The New Ireland

By Martha Duffy

When Mary Robinson was a young girl just out of convent school, her family sent her off to Paris for a year of finishing school. It was there, as an impressionable 17-year-old, that she came to an important realization about her native Ireland. Its historic insularity did not serve to protect its culture, but instead helped keep it in the shadow of the English. "A country like France had such a sense of itself that it could never be diluted," she recalls. "You don't homogenize a culture, you enrich it by diversity of contacts." Only by becoming fully a part of Europe, by broadening its contacts rather than restricting them, could Ireland come into its own. "My view then and now is that there were psychological and cultural reasons why Ireland could be liberated by Europe, allowed to refine its identity within the context of cultural diversity."

Robinson went on to become one of Ireland's foremost international lawyers and a politician known for her secular sophistication. Now as the nation's first woman President, she has become a symbol of its European aspirations, as reflected in its resounding vote of approval last week for the Maastricht treaty and integration into the new European Union. But most important, given the largely ceremonial nature of her office, she has become a symbol of what made that vote possible: Ireland's renewed self-confidence and national pride.

It is midday in Phoenix Park, Dublin, site of the President's house, or Aras an Uachtarain, as the Irish call it. A group of 40 people, most of them fit, elderly, dressed in practical tweeds, have gathered in a gracious 19th century drawing room filled with pale sunlight. They are members of the National Association of Tenants' Organizations, a volunteer group, and have been invited by Robinson for a tour and tea. After a few minutes, a tall, handsome woman, dressed in a bright suit that could be described as benign dress for success, enters and, without fanfare, begins her talk.

She is a natural. Speaking in a vibrant alto voice, she recalls the mansion's past, the various additions made through the centuries, some of them amusingly botched. Seamlessly, she shifts to her family's life within its walls, how her three children enjoy biking through Phoenix Park, how she came to put a light in the family kitchen window -- the Irish symbolic welcome home to those who have emigrated. When the session is over and the President has slipped away as quietly as she arrived, everyone is beaming. A white-haired lady sighs with satisfaction and breathes, "Isn't she someone to be proud of?"

This is a good-news story. There aren't very many of them in politics these days, but the saga of Mary Robinson is the real thing. Irish public life is the stuff of tragedy or bad jokes. The country is haunted by the division between north and south, by the grim persistence of terrorism, by divisive personal issues such as birth control and abortion, and by recurrent scandals. Charles Haughey, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) for nine of the past 13 years, was thrown out of office in January when one scandal too many surfaced.

As a nonexecutive President, Robinson has little real power; her only crucial role is to intervene if she believes that any proposed legislation is unconstitutional. But immediately upon her election in late 1990, Robinson showed that she understood the enduring importance of symbols. From the candle in the kitchen window -- once a sign of welcome to the "tatiehokers," men who went to Scotland to harvest potatoes -- she has created a highly visible office, representing her countrymen at their best. She is now easily the most popular figure in the country, drawing crowds everywhere in her ceaseless crisscrossing of the land.

Robinson has virtually created a new office, one with far more clout than the retirement sinecure it had become. Though she barely squeaked in, her popularity standing in a recent poll was around 80%. A lot of it has to do with Irish pride. By opening up the presidential mansion to virtually any group that wants to come, she has nurtured her countrymen's love for their history. By sailing expertly through 25 or 30 public engagements a week, she | is a highly visible symbol of the national character. By visiting Northern Ireland and encouraging travel between the two states, she embodies the hope that the deadly rancor can be combatted.

Mary Terese Winifred Bourke acquired her commitment to social justice from her family. The Bourkes were Roman Catholic gentry in the prosperous town of Ballina in County Mayo; both parents were doctors. Mary's grandfather, a retired lawyer, took her under his wing, describing his old cases and telling her how the law should be an instrument for social change and the protection of individuals. "Often he'd be in the process of opening a new packet of books that he'd ordered by mail. His communication was short and pithy, and often I would do a lot of the talking."

After her Paris year, Mary went to Trinity College in Dublin to study law. All indications are that she had a good time there. Her mother had bought a Dublin house for her brainy brood (Robinson is the third child and only girl among five) and added a governess to keep order. There were plenty of parties, but according to her brother Henry, "she always got the balance right." After graduation she spent a year at Harvard getting a master's degree at the law school. That was a seismic learning experience.

It was 1967, just before the Harvard Yard exploded with student protest. "There was intense questioning then," she recalls. "I had a law degree, but I hadn't really been encouraged to think. And Harvard was just facing up to the fact that there were inequalities of sex and race." Also, the Harvard method of teaching was different, emphasizing discussion and examining unresolved ambiguities of the law.

Upon returning to Ireland she married fellow lawyer Nicholas Robinson, the son of a Protestant banker and a former political cartoonist for the Irish Times. She took on cases of sexual and employment disadvantage to women. She fought for legalizing birth control and divorce (or "the divorce," as it is known locally). For years she was active in the Labour Party, serving 20 years in the Senate, but her two attempts to run for the more powerful Dail, the lower house of Parliament, ended in defeat. She finally broke with the party because she thought it was intransigent on the Northern Ireland question. A reunified island is perhaps her ultimate goal. In addition, she and her husband helped establish the Irish Center for European Law in Dublin, a forum that is highly respected throughout the Continent. It was a career that could easily have led to a seat on the Supreme Court or a major job with the European Community.

The presidency seemed a remote objective for this highly successful advocate of human rights and feminist causes. So too did her style: she favored severe suits and a nonexistent hairdo and kept her sense of humor well under wraps. Her goals were serious. "She worked in the belief that legal change could provide for social change. In her Senate record and the cases she undertook, she was always there for the hard stuff," says John Rogers, a former Attorney General and Labour Party stalwart.

It took a springy leap of the imagination on the part of Rogers and other Labour masterminds to see their former member as President. But Labour was tired of its minor role in politics. Says Rogers: "The idea was to get a woman of such quality -- her strength challenged the status quo."

When Rogers proposed that she run, he recalls that "she looked as if she'd been shot." Not for long. After a weekend of consulting with her husband, she called back and said, in a typical old-Mary locution, "I think we have reason to talk." The new Mary emerged quickly. Out went the pinstripe wardrobe. In came smart suits, always by Irish designers. A stylist gave her a fashionable haircut, and she began to apply some makeup. Cynical? Not in her view. "I felt it was a way to project that I was serious about the campaign," she says, "and that had its own effect. I saw myself less as the bluestocking and more the person trying to communicate that we have an office here that can represent what is modern about Ireland. I was so keen to get that across that I would have done whatever it took."

But Dublin politicians saw her as a troublemaker who would use her potent legal skills to cross the boundaries of her job and challenge the government. Any such action, they feared, would damage the value of her nebulous office. No fracas has ever occurred. She showed her grasp of the presidency last March in the notorious case in which the government tried to stop a 14-year-old rape victim from going abroad for an abortion. Robinson spoke out, emphasizing the need for Irish society to confront the issue but not dictating the resolution. Characteristically, she saw a chance to guide her people by citing the human sides of a dilemma that highlights how fast even this homogeneous country is changing.

All is not astuteness, however. She is an intellectual, yes, and a realist. But as an old colleague notes, she has a mulish streak. "She can idealize the causes she's involved in just because they are hers," he observes. "All her geese are swans." Digging in too hard, even falling prey to fixations, has cost her some court decisions in the past. "A stubborn girl is our Mary," laughs Rogers.

But the emphatic, headstrong side of the President -- a side the Irish would relish -- is rarely seen. She admits that she doused the spontaneous side of her nature when she joined the bewigged, masculine Irish bar. Even now she is loath to provide a glimpse into her exemplary private life. When she toured the U.S. last fall, she came across as rather straitlaced. An American who talked to her said the unthinkable: "She's Nancy Reagan -- only good."

The remark is not only rough, it's wrong. Nancy Reagan's gelid smile and fixed gaze are foreign to Robinson, who really sparkles when she meets people. She has a thrilling, throaty laugh, but quips are not her style. Her brothers and old friends insist that she can top tall stories with the best of them -- and that in a land where the gab is the biggest gift of all. Around a dinner table, she and her husband often talk vehemently and at once, taking different verbal paths to the same end -- rather like characters in an opera.

Her trustiest ally is her husband, who functions as a candid and unsparing critic. "There are times when he tells me what I really don't want to know," she says with a laugh. Perhaps more important, he sees himself frankly as a role model for other men. "I have no problem about appearing with Mary and supporting her," he says. "She is the one of us who holds office."

Their friends note that temperamentally, the couple balance each other well. Mary is the classic overachiever with plenty of ambition and the kind of bottomless stamina that successful politicians often have. Nick, observes Irish Senator David Norris, has an incisive mind but appreciates "good food and good grog and enjoying life at an easier pace." The Robinsons guard the privacy of their children, Tessa, 19, William, 18, and Aubrey, 11. When Robinson visited Belfast in February, security was tight, but the word leaked to the press. Aubrey missed his customary perfect score in current events because, alone of his class, he did not know his mother's travel plans.

Around Dublin, Robinson is at least as big a celebrity as any U2 band member or Sinead O'Connor. Like royalty, she cannot go to a convenience store without being recognized and fussed over. In fact, the Observer has called her "the thinking man's Princess Di." There are still five years to go in her term of office and, if she wants, she can run for another seven-year stint. If she has her way -- and she is very determined -- she will leave her country better off than she found it.