William Marvel: Democracy or Democrats?

I’m sure someone else composed President Biden’s inaugural address for him, but this time I don’t think he was trying to pass off another person’s writing as his own. Obviously he approved of the speech. It demonstrated that, as usual, his heart is in the right place, even if it left us doubting where his head is. He set himself the impossible task of unifying diametrically opposed factions, which he categorized as liars and truth-tellers, or racists and idealists, and then urged them all to “treat each other with dignity and respect.”

A friend asked me to say something “uplifting” about Amanda Gorman’s poem —which I was going to anyway, although Gorman herself did all the lifting-up necessary. It’s deliriously inspiring for an old man who laments the cultural decay of succeeding generations to hear that there is someone so young who can still make music out of everyday words. The rap ode she delivered seemed most remarkable for its appeals to gratitude and camaraderie, and for its avoidance of grievance and condemnation. She offered her own presence at the inauguration as a refutation of our reputedly endemic racism, and her characterization of the nation as “not broken but simply unfinished” congratulated a country that continues to aspire. She offered a more feasible program of reconciliation and renewal than Biden did.