Beneath President Biden’s calls for unity and bipartisanship in his inaugural address lurked a bleak assessment of the country he was preparing to govern.
Biden spoke of an “uncivil war” between red and blue America, occasionally invoking the Civil War itself, and said we were living through a “dark winter.” He warned of the “rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism.” He expressed hope, though not certainty, that the nation’s democratic institutions would not “die on our watch but thrive.” Of the pandemic, he predicted: “We’re entering what may be the darkest and deadliest period of the virus.”
Only recently, the media and political establishment largely panned “dark” inaugural addresses, such as the “American carnage” speech delivered by former President Donald Trump in 2017. “That was some weird s—,” former President George W. Bush remarked afterward. But Biden also spoke of the “foes we face” as living in the United States: “anger, resentment, and hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, and hopelessness.”
The fraternity of ex-presidents on hand for Biden’s speech did not appear to disagree entirely with his dire view of the state of the union. While Bush spoke of a “generous country, people of great hearts,” he also said, “I think if Americans love their neighbor like they would like to be loved themselves, a lot of division in our society would end.”
“We’ve got to not just listen to folks we agree with but listen to folks we don’t,” former President Barack Obama exhorted the public in the same inaugural video. “We are both trying to come back to normalcy, deal with totally abnormal challenges, and do what we do best, which is try to make a more perfect union,” said former President Bill Clinton, who added, “everybody needs to get off their high horse and reach out to their friends and neighbors.”
The inauguration took place in the shadow of two deadly events: the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, in which five people lost their lives, and a pandemic that has killed over 400,000 people in the U.S. It also followed a period of political division, symbolized by the fact that Trump, who disputed the election results until just days before his term came to a close, refused to attend his successor’s swearing-in ceremony.
But even amid talk of unity, Biden suggested only “enough of us” would “come together to carry all of us forward.” Under his watch, Senate Democrats will lead an impeachment trial of Trump, who is already out of office.
A former top aide to Biden called the speech a “unifying message of bipartisanship” but also said it would “lead the country away from dystopia and chaos.”
“It was a speech for the moment, not a speech for the ages,” said Kenneth Walsh, author of Presidential Leadership in Crisis: Defining Moments of the Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump. He added that the broad message of bipartisanship “fights against” the thinly veiled criticism of Trump and the opening salvos of the Biden administration.
“He is going to pursue a liberal Democratic agenda whether Republicans like it or not,” Walsh said.
To many of Biden’s voters, it was simply an apt description of the country as Trump left it and the reason they hoped to turn the page toward a new administration.
“It was the speech many Americans expected to hear from Joe Biden and wanted to hear from him,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “He talked about unity and ending the civil war. The 46th president clearly tried to lower the temperature in Washington, and he hopes cooler heads prevail.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in her first press briefing Wednesday night that Biden “ran against Donald Trump because he did not think he was fit to serve in office, long before the events of Jan. 6.”
The contentious presidential election, in which Biden won the top battleground states by a total of fewer than 0.5 points despite receiving an absolute majority of the national popular vote, complicates any call for unity in any event. A pre-inauguration Morning Consult poll found 91% of Democrats but only 16% of Republicans held a favorable view of Biden. Independents were split 52% favorable to 41% unfavorable.
Walsh, a past president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and contributor to U.S. News & World Report, said many in both parties now question whether the bygone “era of comity” for which Biden claims affection “is even appropriate anymore.”
