Biden's speech: unity vs. solving real problems

Biden's Inaugural Speech was a dramatic example of the challenge of the President acting in both of his Presidential roles, head of state and head of government. And here we saw some of the tension between those two roles. And we also see the balancing act the new President was doing between two essential roles: reassuring those who did not vote for him while straightforwardly condemning the violent if clownish coup attempt by his predecessor.

In the many democracies that have separate heads of state and heads of government, likr the Queen of England and the Prime Minister, it is customary for public messages by the head of state that go beyond routine declarations of holidays or acknowledgment of dramatic tragedies to appeal for unity and support of the established government.

A recent example came in Austria after the deadly mass-shooting terrorist attacks by an Islamist terrorist in November 2020. The President and head of state Alexander Van der Bellen dclared that, "In the center of Vienna in the middle of our republic a cowardly terrorist attack on the heart of our society took place." But he declared that hate will never be stronger "than our society", and the "our liberal democracy" faced a threat from terrorists who deeply hate it. He expressed "our deep sympathy for all the injured who in these hours are fighting for their lives. Our tears flow for everyone in our midst who lost their lives."

Sebastian Kurz, the Chancellor and head of government, also expressed his sympathy for the victims and denounced the terrorists. But even in his early reaction, he stressed more policy-oriented framing, emphasizing his determination to catch the bad guys and declared melodramatically is was a "fight between civilization and barbarism," which fits with Kurz' usual political alarmism against Muslim immigrants. The President's and Chancellor's statements were complimentary, but with different inflections reflected their official roles. (Quotes from: Kurz und Van der Bellen sprachen zum Terroranschlag in Wien Standard/APA 03.11.2020; my translatoins from the German)

The official transcript of Biden's speech is available on the White House website, Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. The transcript has about 100 paragraph breaks, so I'm doing my own breaks in the quotations here.

The calls for unity are very characteristic for a President in the head of state role:

History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And, we must meet this moment as the United States of America.

But there are also political goals that the Biden-Harris Administration has set for itself prior to the Inauguration. And they are goals that some people favor, and others oppose. Which means there can't be complete unity around those. There will be winners and losers in some way or another when substantive policies are enacted. Even last year' replacement of the Mississippi state flag with it's Confederate imagery - a important but literally symbolic decision - had winners and losers, because white supremacist fans of sedition opposed it with some amount of passion.

Biden made some acknowledgment of this: "Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial. Victory is never assured." (my emphasis)

That notion is straight out of Madison's Federalist #10. Unity around support for a democratic system and the rule of law does not mean that politics and policy disagreements end. It means that everyone agrees that those are the rules under which those battles will be fought.

One of the most familiar examples of group unity occurs in the early days of wars. The liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. observed that every war is popular during the first 30 days. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out in The Culture of Contentment (1992):

Almost any military venture receives strong popular approval in the short run; the citizenry rallies to the flag and to the forces engaged in combat. The strategy and technology of the new war evoke admiration and applause. This reaction is related not to economics or politics but more deeply to anthropology. As in ancient times, when the drums sound in the distant forest, there is an assured tribal response. It is the rallying beat of the drums, not the virtue of the cause, that is the vital mobilizing force.

He follows immediately, "But this does not last." The philosopher William James famously wrote an antiwar essay about "the moral equivalent of war," in which he hoped that the kind of concentrated energy that countries bring to a war effort could be duplicated for more peaceful ends. But despite the mobilization talents that countries can show during wartime, the feelings of patriotic national unity among the general population that facilitate such collective efforts are fundamentally also based on fear and hatred.

And as we saw during the invasion of the Capitol building January 6 by a howling white supremacist lynch mob, fear and hatred can bring other results than national unity among a people. In practice, even in those patriotic National Unity moments, zealots are quick to find enemies among the home team, as well. Just ask the members of the band formerly known as the Dixie Chicks.

In the "constant struggle" comment quoted above, Biden explicitly acknowledged that perfect unity on political matters is just not possible, although an authoritarian government can create a semblance of it.

And he wouldn't have been doing his job as head of government or head of state if he hadn't taken note of the violent insurrection of January 6 aimed at throwing out the democratic vote for the President, an action that which resulted in five deaths. Not explicitly acknowledging that event that happened exactly two weeks before in the same place he had just taken the Presidential oath of office would have been downright bizarre. As he did in this passage:

Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded. We have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.

And probably the most important part of the speech: "And here we stand, just days after a riotous mob thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, and to drive us from this sacred ground. That did not happen. It will never happen. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever."

The radical Republicans, "respectable" and otherwise, won't stop their obstruction and even violent opposition yet. But if Biden hadn't made some explicit statement about stopping them like that one, they would have taken that as a blatant surrender.

Since Biden did single out the seditionists the way he did, even his less enthusiastic supporters aren't much inclined to grump about the "unity" rhetoric and the absence of explicit references to policy goals.

But this passage also shows that in the current situation, vague rhetoric about "unity" fits uncomfortably with the problems he identifies in this passage, that I believe is the first time an American President has explicitly referred to "white supremacy":

A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer. A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat. To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy:

Unity.

Unity. [my emphasis]

But since a large number of Republican voters and office holders are enthusiastic supporters of white supremacy, though at least some of them are careful not to use the term in polite company, it will take more than a vague commitment to "unity" to deal with such a deeply entrenched social pathology.

Near the end, Biden emphasized how drastically far from unity the Capitol insurrection was, "We met the moment. That democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch but thrived." (my emphasis)

A similar tension comes in his reference to the Emancipation Proclamation:

In another January in Washington, on New Year’s Day 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the President said, “If my name ever goes down into history it will be for this act and my whole soul is in it.” My whole soul is in it. Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.

And he follows that with references to various policy goals.

Now, I'm totally on board with unity in the sense of the Emancipation Proclamation. But we should remember how the Emancipation Proclamation facilitated unity. It was a wartime measure. It abolished slavery on the territory of the military enemy. Preserving slavery was the fundamental cause for which the other side was fighting. It was an approach to pursuing unity by completely rejecting the social institution to which the enemy was totally committed.

And it was an effective measure. Once news spread in the Confederacy about the Proclamation, slaves began to desert their owners and their plantations. That not only dealt a hammer blow to the Confederate economy. It also gave the Union army a large number of black recruits whose participation in the war had an immediate military and psychological effect on the Confederate enemy. And it took more than two additional years of actual war to end the Confederacy and make emancipation permanent.

Also, in the terms used at the time, the Emancipation Proclamation turned the war from a conventional war (aimed at defeating the enemy armies) to a revolutionary war (aimed at overturning the social order of the enemy, as in the post-French Revolution wars against conservative countries from Switzerland to Russia).

So there's something very contradictory in the full Hegelian sense about the notion of unity in the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation!

One grumble: the reference to American Exceptionalism become more problematic to me as time goes on. For instance, from the speech: "We look ahead in our uniquely American way – restless, bold, optimistic – and set our sights on the nation we know we can be and we must be."

Only Americans are restless, bold, or optimistic? This is silly and embarrassing.

I'll end by noticing that Biden's speech makes use of American history as a kind of "mythical" vision, a story of progress through struggle among Americans ourselves toward greater amounts of freedom, equality, and justice. This is an aspirational, value-based, inspirational narrative of history in the Enlightenment spirit of history as progress to higher levels.

It's not entirely compatible with academic history. But it's not something that politics can't completely do away with either. And it can also be reality-based. A lot of it isn't. But I don't think the left or the center can afford to leave that kind of historical-political narrative building to the right. Because the right ain't gonna stop doing it.