Troy D. Davis  Eamon de Valéra’s Political Education: The American Tour of 1919–20 With a poet’s economy of language, Brendan Kennelly’s poem “Points of View” highlights a fact central to any discussion of Ireland’s most influential politician of the twentieth century—the inescapable reality that Eamon de Valéra was a deeply controversial figure: A neighbour said De Valéra was / As straight as Christ, / As spiritually strong. / The man in the next house said / ’Twas a great pity / He wasn’t crucified as young. 1 To his supporters—people like Kennelly’s first neighbor—de Valéra was a political messiah and national savior.To his detractors, like the man in the next house, Ireland would have been better off had the British implemented the death sentence that their military court had imposed on him following the Easter Rising, when de Valéra had reached the symbolically weighted age of thirty-three years. The controversy surrounding de Valéra owes primarily to the dogmatic republican stand he took during the debate over ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921,a stand that de Valéra’s pro-Treaty opponents charged was the main cause of the Irish Civil War of 1922–23. Yet, de Valéra was not always so unbending. The political scientist Brian Farrell, for instance, has argued that throughout most of his political career,de Valéra’s style of leadership was that of a “charismatic chairman”—one who concentrated on building consensus and managing compromise. Farrell asserts that these political traits belie the com- mon image of de Valéra as a Machiavellian dictator who insisted on having his own way, who could not abide dissent from his doctrinaire positions, and who expected unquestioning obedience from all true Irish nationalists. Farrell attrib- utes this latter image to de Valéra’s Treaty stand and the civil war that followed, new hibernia review / iris éireannach nua, 10:1 (spring / earrach, 2006), 65–78 1. Brendan Kennelly, “Points of View,” Familiar Strangers—New and Selected Poems 1960–2004 (Tarset,UK: Bloodaxe Boods, 2004), p. 414. I wish to thank the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Stephen F. Austin State University for a 2003–04 Faculty Research Grant that made archival research for this article possible.