Washington: President-elect Joe Biden will take the stage for his inaugural address at perhaps the most difficult starting point for a president since Franklin Roosevelt. The latter began his first term by assuring a nation scarred by the Great Depression that ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself’. Joe Biden will certainly have to think of such phrases for a nation scarred by COVID-19.
But memorable turns of phrase like Roosevelt’s are more the exception than the rule when it comes to inaugural addresses.
Former President Barack Obama in his memoir noted that singer Aretha Franklin’s showy hat and a glitch in Chief Justice John Roberts’ administration of the oath of office got more attention than his speech in the days following the first Black president’s address, delivered as the nation was mired in recession and a growing malaise over two intractable wars.
Now, with the coronavirus raging, unemployment claims soaring and partisan divisions sharpening, Biden faces a fraught moment as he prepares to deliver a speech that aides say he wants to use to ‘call Americans to unity’. “The situation he faces is absolutely brutal,” said Cody Keenan, who served as a chief speechwriter for Obama and assisted with his two inaugural addresses.
Keenan added that Biden in many ways is ‘the perfect president for the moment, because he is not hyperbolic, he’s not a bomb thrower, he’s surrounded himself with policy wonks who already have all these plans. I think what we are going to hear him talk about is ‘Here’s where we are, here’s what we have to get done.’ I think that’s going to go a long way just to making people feel better.’
With the current mood of the country, Biden’s consistent focus on restoring ‘the soul of America’ may be of greater value to the nation than any soaring oratory, in the view of some Democratic allies of the incoming president.
“It is entirely possible that this inaugural is one we remember for generations to come, because of the gravity of this moment,” said David Litt. He served as an Obama speechwriter and wrote the comedic memoir, ‘Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years’.
The inaugural address is as much a celebration of the peaceful handover of power as it is a set piece for a new or re-elected president to lay out a vision for the nation. In recent memory, inaugural addresses have followed a predictable structure: The nation has challenges but there is hope to solve the problems if the president’s agenda is embraced.
One tradition dating back at least to Jimmy Carter’s 1977 inaugural is for the incoming president to offer the nation’s gratitude to the outgoing president — a moment of graciousness intended to put aside the strife of the political campaign and signal to Americans that it’s time to come together as a nation.
President Donald Trump won’t be there to hear it. He’s already said he won’t attend the inauguration — the first outgoing president to skip his successor’s swearing-in since Andrew Johnson did not attend Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration in 1869.