When Joe Biden raises his hand to take the oath of office, he will replace a president better known for raising his fist at the inauguration on January 6th. Biden will soon follow in the footsteps of his predecessor in a crime scene. .
The capital halls, once filled with schoolchildren in backpacks, are now filled with bivouacs. Bunting replaced by barricades. Plywood parades. No amount of American flags will be able to clear the memory of its use in attack.
“I think the sense that many Americans have had since the beginning of the pandemic, that we are experiencing an unprecedented crisis, has really exploded into something even bigger,” said Harvard professor Jill Lepore.
She carefully uses the word “unprecedented.” Author of a comprehensive account of America (“These Truths: A History of the United States”), he has a slow pulse of history. But, she says, the word fits our times.
“I think a comparison would be September 11, which in many ways is a very different political moment and a completely different case of violence,” Lepore told “60 Minutes” correspondent John Dickerson. “It is essentially an act of war. But I think at that time, Americans understood that something had changed profoundly.
“I think we will remember January 6 in the same way, that it is a day when everything has changed, when the unthinkable has become possible in the United States.”
“It was, at least in one reading, the president who encouraged a lot to go to the legislature,” Jamelle Bouie told The New York Times. “Even with the incumbent president very soon, there will still be a crisis, not because he is there, but because we have learned something about the political system. I learned something about what is possible and what at least one faction of American voters and American lawmakers believe about the nature of our democracy, which is that if I can’t win, then the person who does it or the party who does it is not legitimate. ” .
Bouie referred to Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 speech “A Divided House” (“A Divided House Against It Cannot Stand”): “And, you know, like, the contemporary discussion of this, or in popular discussion, ‘divided house’ it usually refers to the sorting of the political division. But the literal metaphor was, “A house cannot stand like this; it must be one thing or it must be the other ”.
Dickerson said, “Right, the ‘Divided House’ speech is not ‘Now let’s all get together,’ but ‘One side must win this argument.’
And there is no alternative on a long horizon in which we can have a faction of Americans who look at the attack on the Chapter and see this as something to imitate or something to repeat, as something that is laudatory. For example, which cannot coexist with the constitutional government as we understand it, “Bouie said.
Carolyn Kaster / AP
Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson said: “We have a policy that is very much seen as a team sport right now. The biggest issue is providing help and comfort to other parties, instead of knowing, let’s talk about these differences. “
Gerson was the lead writer of President George W. Bush’s inaugural address in 2001: The address came after the bitter elections of 2000, which were decided by the Supreme Court:
“America has never been united by blood, birth, or earth. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our environments, elevate us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens.”
“I came back and read the speech recently,” Gerson said, “and I found myself suffocating, not just because of the words, but because it was a realistic prospect at the time, that we could have national healing based. on national values.
“My concern is now, is it a naive approach? You know, the assertion of common values will be accepted by a country that lives in different cultures and ways of life?”
The problem, Gerson said, is that President Trump and the Republican Party have inflamed politics at such a high temperature that it cannot be reduced.
“Well, I think apocalyptic language is one of the worst issues in our politics – this view that if you lose, that the country is lost,” Gerson said. “This is a way to motivate participation in the vote. It is also a way to destroy the country’s institutions.”
President Trump’s apocalyptic theater, with himself as the protector of Christianity, played last summer in the very place where Mr. Biden will begin his inauguration day: St. John’s Church, just a few steps from the White House.
“Politics must be flexible; it must exist and give and take,” Lepore said. “You have to be able to tolerate the political views of your political opponents. They have to be legitimate opinions. They can’t be heresies. And this fusion of religion and politics during the 20th century, you know, we see that cost now.”
In 1801, after one of the worst political campaigns in America, Thomas Jefferson sought to stop the flame. “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle,” he said in his inaugural speech, promising stability because “error of opinion can be tolerated where reason is left free to fight it.”
But is the reason still at the height of the pregnancy?
Lepore said: “If you attack the institutions that produce and disseminate knowledge, if you attack them as having no knowledge, you get to this point where you have undermined the very idea that there is such a thing as knowledge.”
The new Biden administration could only benefit by providing a steady stream of useful information – enhancing the resurgence of the long-forgotten “slow news day”.
Lepore said: “In fact, you just have to introduce yourself, have real information, bring people who do their job and answer the questions that the press and the public have.”
“Only the facts, ma’am, who governs?” Dickerson asked.
“Yes,” she laughed. “I really think it goes quite far.”
The heaviest task for the incoming administration will be to talk to voters who fear it.
Gerson said: “I think that’s going to be his main task at this inauguration, it’s to talk to Americans who don’t even feel connected to this experiment anymore and tell them that they have a stake and that they are appreciated in this system. I think that you have to give way to the people who have supported Trump over the years to find a different way of doing politics. You know, you can’t reject them as always dirty.
“Rhetoric can do a lot to try to create space for health. And that, I think, what you should be looking for right now, is a way to provide a refuge (a rhetorical refuge) for those who want to serve the country.”
Joe Biden will be inaugurated on the scar of insurrection. But the Capitol wound will be behind him. In front of? The road to convalescence found in millions who marched, gathered and voted peacefully; and the officials who protected the vote. They have joined a tired army that is already keeping the faith – the first responders and our neighbors leading us into a year of pandemic.
The inaugurations represent a great reopening of the American Experiment, where hope lies not in those who have violated its standards, but in those who – although they feel broken – confirmed these standards.
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Story by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Remington Korper.