As I sat watching the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden as the 46th President of the United States, I reflected on the unique importance of the inaugural address in American politics.
Inaugural addresses happen once every four years in a tradition dating back to the inauguration of our first president, George Washington. It allows the new president to speak to the nation as its leader for the first time and set the tone for their administration. The most famous (or infamous) inaugural addresses often come to define that presidency. Consider, for example, the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, who famously challenged Americans amid the anxieties of the Cold War to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country.
Likewise, Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is remembered for asking the country to proceed “with malice towards none, with charity for all” to heal the gaping wounds left by the Civil War, then grinding into its fourth and final year.
More recently, Donald Trump’s cry against “American carnage” in his inaugural address may come to be a quote that defines his tenure in office as well, though perhaps not in the way that he intended.
Joe Biden, too, used his inaugural address to attempt to set the tone for his new administration. The theme of unity was unsurprisingly front and center in this speech, as it defined Biden’s message on the campaign trail. He tapped into a deep desire in the nation as a whole by focusing on this theme, as he was able to defy political gravity and win the single largest popular vote total in U.S. history.
“My whole soul is in this,” Biden said in his address, “bringing America together.” He called for the country to once again unify around the values and ideals that have defined our republic throughout its history and continue to strive for them. Echoing his campaign once again, he called to “restore the soul and secure the future of America.” For this to happen, in Biden’s view, we should not retreat further into bitter factionalism but instead recommit to faith in our representative democracy and each other.
This sort of national recommitment is by no means an easy task. If the past few election cycles have demonstrated anything, it is that many Americans have lost faith in democracy and any kind of national unity. Biden has taken hits from both the left and right on this approach, with his calls for unity characterized as, at best, naive and anachronistic and, at worst, disingenuous.
Indeed, it is true that the nation faces huge policy hurdles to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, protect the environment and stimulate the economy, and Biden is not treading on any new ground with his calls for unity. However, I pray that Biden’s administration can be a force to unify our nation. If we cannot successfully reduce the temperature in our political discourse and heal our democracy, we may not be able to accomplish anything at all.
