I've been following it, not for political reasons but because I too am of Irish descent and hold a certain fascination with all things Irish.
We were in Ireland last year and spent about half of our time in the county my father's family left behind, and I found it so charming and welcoming. The town and county ended up being among my very favorite places in the whole of our month overseas. It is a weird thing that I don't think the English language has words for, the feeling of coming home to a place you've never been, but that side of the family kept the "old country" alive in stories and visits so it kind of makes sense that it felt a little familiar. If I heard anything about my mother's family's Polish hometown, it was how miserable it was - it wasn't a place anyone reminisced about or spoke of fondly. But Ireland occupied a revered place in memory/imagination among my Irish relatives. My great-grandfather, who I never knew, got in some legal trouble here in the States and moved back to Ireland for a long stretch, where he met my great-grandmother (and got in some fresh trouble which led them to emigrate to Canada - life must have been wild in an era before electronic records that follow you everywhere!). And my grandparents visited Co. Donegal when I was in middle school, bringing me home an entirely inappropriate romance novel simply because it had the common-noun version of my name (cailin - Irish for girl) in the blurb, and their photos and stories made me determined to get there myself someday.
I think the thing I liked best, and that probably surprised me most, is how enthusiastic people I spoke with were about my interest in family history and culture. You'd think they'd get sick of Americans (and other descendants of the famine diaspora) popping in looking for their roots, but I never got even a hint of that. I'm still in social media contact with one person I met in Donegal, and have had a few long email exchanges with others involved in the county museum and historical society about resources I should explore when I go back with more time to dig through old records and such. And I do absolutely intend to go back for an extended visit once my youngest is off to college, not just to continue tracing the family history but to do a language immersion program as well.
On our last day, on the way back to Shannon to catch our flight home, we passed through the town of Obama's ancestral roots and were absolutely stunned by all the place names and markers dedicated to his visit. Someone there told us that it is the same in the places Kennedy visited in Co. Wexford, where his ancestors came from. It surprised me that it was such a big deal but it was kind of neat to think that the connection between Ireland and the descendants of all the people who left is felt in both directions.
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