The Institution Man Offers An Invitation: President Joe Biden's Old Fashioned American Optimism
Reflections on POTUS's Philadelphia Speech
It may seem strange to bet on the heart beat of a man who will reach his eightieth year before the year’s close. And yet, the Biden presidency, deferred twice before in ‘88 and ‘08, seems one of the most transformative of my lifetime. Long may it last.
Of course it won’t, though, will it? This, too, shall pass, as all things do — though hopefully not to Kamala Harris.
Lincoln knew about the impermanence of life as well, though he hoped that America wouldn’t be on the chopping block. Lincoln put his sentiments best before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society on September 30th, 1859.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! -- how consoling in the depths of affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away." And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.
Were she to fall, he prophesied in January 1838 she would fall by her own hand.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
We know what happens next — the Civil War, a historic fact that is never far from mind, apparently. I agree with David Brin. There are many phases of the American civil war.
Biden rightly denounced those calling for violence.
On top of that, there are public figures today, yesterday and the day before predicting and all but calling for mass violence and rioting in the streets. This is inflammatory. It’s dangerous.
But Biden left out the obvious question:
What shall we do when others are encouraging a civil war amongst us?
Wang Huning in his prophetic book, America Against America, laid out the internal contradictions within the United States in 1988 with an eye toward heighten them. Today he advises the highest ranks of the Chinese government.
I’m told Sensei Peter Thiel had the book translated. Why?
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I’m something of a speechwriter myself having written or two for my friends in Congress and the Senate. I even managed to smuggle in a phrase or two to be uttered by the former guy. It’s gauche to say what I authored but you’ve heard my turn of phrase or bon mot here and there.
I’m happy to do it and will keep doing it as long as I am able. If I am promiscuous so be it.
Trump was nothing if not a great marketer and I enjoyed how readily he sold America whilst his son-in-law sold her out.
After the speech, we’re left with the impressionistic and stylistic.
The central mistake of the speech is that it attacked the MAGA Republicans rather than co-opted them. Which is a shame because Biden’s presidency is when the MAGA presidency really began. No Chisraeli nonsense here, folks. No malarkey! No President Kushner but I repeat myself.
I had expected to spend the years since Trump’s departure as a kind of loyal opposition but I fear I have become a convert in recent months, much to the lament of some of my erstwhile friends. I said when Biden took the oath of office that I would give him the benefit of the doubt. In the early days he was lackluster. Who is this Dark Brandon fellow and why does he keep winning time and again and all of a sudden?
“He’s learned to calibrate himself,” says a friend of the president. “Aloof can be very effective.”
Apparently so.
The setting was suggestive of the “Dark Brandon” meme — he looked as if he had come from hell — but the content was anything but.
Unlike his less successful Democratic predecessor — yes, I said it and so are others — President Biden makes his speech not about himself but about us — “We the People” — and the country we want to build and inherit.
The conflation between the themes and words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence is something you might have seen from pre-Trump Republican president.
I speak to you tonight from sacred ground in America: Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pa.
This is where America made its declaration of independence to the world more than two centuries ago, with an idea unique among nations: that in America, we’re all created equal.
This is where the United States Constitution was written and debated. This is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known.
With three simple words: we, the people; we, the people. These two documents and their ideas they embody — equality and democracy — are the rock upon which this nation is built.
They are how we became the greatest nation on earth. They are why, for more than two centuries, America has been a beacon to the world.
The speech recalled Coolidge’s speech on the Declaration of Independence. It is our principles that give us our strength. Quite right.
But it’s where Biden separated out the MAGA Republicans from the conservative Republicans was similarly noteworthy though something of a mistake.
I think this mistake comes from his chief speechwriter — Indian-American Vinay Reddy — who, I think, struggles to get what makes Biden appealing to the working class white voters he needs to keep on team to keep Trumpism from returning. (I suppose for the son of Indian immigrants there isn’t that much that was great about America before he arrived.)
If you want to take over MAGA, you appeal to their pride. Biden somewhat gets it by invoking that “That’s Not Who We Are” bit but he really ought to have said, “That’s not who you are.”
He should have said: “You, my fellow Americans, fight our wars. You were taken advantage of by generations of policy makers. We shipped you to Afghanistan while shipping your jobs to China.”
Imagine if he had gone up there and said, “Look, no malarkey, but I get it. You want your country to kick ass. Well, I whacked Bin Laden’s boy. You want America to be energy independent. Well, I went and told the Saudis and Emiratis what’s up.”
In any event, Biden’s speech broke the parallelism you’d expect from a speechwriter who doesn’t quite get the craft or the importance of repetition. You repeat the “do not”; you don’t break from it in the paragraph. It’s stylistically lazy.
And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election, and they’re working right now as I speak in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
Indeed, Biden’s speech was an old time speech, one that sought to make America a great country again without any of the pabulum. “I believe it’s my duty, my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful,” he said.
There’s none of the Gen X pass aggressive pessimism that we’ve come to expect from Donald Trump’s chief speechwriter, Steve Miller. I have known him for fifteen years and I have never know him to be anything but dark and mean spirited.
Nor does Biden’s speech have any of the bio nonsense of Obama who wanted you to feel good about his election and who dismissed any criticism as anti-black racism.
Biden’s speech is ambitious without being preening like our very online Obama. (As an aside: One of the great joys of the Biden presidency is learning all the ways in which Obama and Biden quibbled. Biden opposed Libya, for example, and thought that the health care issues would dog the presidency — exactly what has happened. See generally, “Who’s the Change Agent Now?” in New York Magazine.)
Sensei Thiel made the case that we should take Trump seriously not literally but Biden is the more subtle player in the game. Thiel once claimed that the problem with major politicians is that they weren’t pessimistic enough. He mocked American exceptionalism in favor of American greatness — one step away from a “multipolar” world — all the while getting money from KKR, itself backed by the Chinese.
Biden’s speech was necessarily optimistic. Optimism is a weapon — and among the most powerful of a president.
The Biden policies are very good—a little too good. They achieve the sort of thing that past presidencies might have wistfully wanted.
Here is a man who has thought his whole life about being president playing the game at the highest levels, despite his age, despite the loss of his favored son. He has a vision. You may not like it but this is what peak presidency looks like.
On energy, we are finally moving headlong into a new future.
On monopoly policy, the tech companies are suitably chastened. They are being forced to become national champions whether they like it or not.
On education, he gave a much needed jubilee for those who need it most. The elite colleges are on the back foot with a lawsuit against them for colluding on financial aid. Who knows how the Supreme Court will rule on race preferences?
On crime, we have a speech about the sorts of technology approaches to law enforcement. Republicans tried the tone deaf nonsense during the campaign about Biden disliking blacks because he opposed crime.
Republicans have little to offer. Like Mitt Romney before him who wanted to be the president for reasons unknown, Kevin McCarthy offers few details on what he’d actually do were he to become Speaker. As Majority Leader McCarthy has been busy bunking with fraudster Frank Luntz, palling around with corrupt lobbyist Jeff Miller, and placing Chinese spies like Peter Kuo at the California GOP. What bad behavior will he get up into were he actually Speaker of the House?
The Republican attacks against Biden show they have nothing to show for the four years of personality cult — just some stolen documents and ruined lives over January 6th.
The wise move for President Joe Biden is to get even more Lincolnian. Biden needs a “with malice toward none, with charity for all” moment for MAGA. Yes, we should build up the institutions which sustain America, but also highlight our shared values.
Biden needs to reach out to Trump voters and learn how to talk to them. I took his speech as invitation.
I took the opposite message from the speech . A door whacked firmly in the face of someone who might be about to peak inside to see what Biden had to offer. If he delivered speech you wanted him to, then maybe a different story. But that’s not the speech he delivered... then again, maybe I am taking him literally not seriously ?
I hope this is Dark Satire for Dark Times.
If not I will maintain this subscription for what can only be chilling insights not unlike those of the last moments inside the line-up for Koolaide at Jonestown.