By the smoky orange light of flaming tar barrels, voters in County Clare sang and danced at the crossroads one night last week. They were celebrating the return to power, in Ireland's first general elections since 1954, of their own 74-year-old Eamon de Valera, whose Fianna Fail (Men of Destiny) Party scored a clear-cut victory by taking 78 of the Irish Dail's 147 seats.
The venerable Dev is half-blind and not the man he used to be, but he is still Ireland's best-known politician. He was a world figure when Dwight Eisenhower was an unknown Army major, served as president of...
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